


The Great Mortality

by waterbesideme



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Drama & Romance, F/M, Happy Murder Family, I spy a redemption arc, M/M, Revenge, Spies & Secret Agents, Tragedy, World War II, slow burn so slow you don't even know if the fire is lit, there's a whole bunch of espionage and secrets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-04-23 06:47:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 129,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14326887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterbesideme/pseuds/waterbesideme
Summary: Easy Company receives a German spy they don't particularly care for. Karolina Shütze is assigned to a company preventing her from exacting her revenge. Secrets, vendettas, and a world at war bring them together to do one thing: kill Nazis. And who knows? Maybe they can be friends after all.





	1. Geistermädchen

Chapter One

Giestermädchen

_December 1943 - Aldbourne, England_

Colonel Sink twisted the file in his hand, regarding it with a suspicious eye before letting it drop to the desk below him. The folder landed with a dull thunk, and Lewis Nixon blinked. He weaved his fingers together and placed his hands on his knee and watched Sink chew on the edge of his mustache.

"I'm not a man to beat around the bush, Nixon," Sink said. He sank down into the leather armchair he had re-purposed as his desk chair. "But I don't even know how to get started on this one."

Nixon had been having a perfectly fine day before this. He had woken up - hungover, but not so much that he felt ill - and discovered that the English broad he had brought back to his billet the night before had gone, but she had written her address on his washstand mirror in lipstick. He had drank a fresh cup of chicory coffee that almost tasted like the real thing, had taken a stroll down to the pub to reclaim his aviators, and had run into a friendly Irish Setter and its very friendly owner on the way to the officer's headquarters. It was there that Sink's courier had intercepted him and loaded him into a jeep and deposited him in Sink's office. He didn't have the slightest clue what was going on. He wondered if all his misdeeds could fill a folder like that.

"Well, sir," Nixon said. "Are any of us being reprimanded? Or is it, maybe, well... am I being reprimanded? If so, I can assure you..."

Sink waved a hand at him. "No, Nixon, it's not you this time. It's a new addition to the battalion."

Nixon nodded slowly. Sink sighed and tried again.

"Far be it for me to understand, but new team members are being added to each battalion in order to aid our strategy and intelligence when we drop into France." Sink scooted the file towards Nixon with a forefinger. "This is coming straight from division HQ. A better word for these "team members" would be operatives. They're straight from the SIS and assigned to each battalion based on the outfit's needs."

Nixon picked up the weighty folder and gave Sink an even look. "They think the 101st has  _needs_?"

Sink grimaced. "They think the 101st needs spies." He picked up a fountain pen and drummed it on the desk. "These operatives are multi-national, some who've defected from their home countries to aid the Allied war effort. And they are both male and female."

Nixon flipped open the folder. Multiple files were attached to each other with overlapping paper clips, as if the secretary compiling it had added page after page in surprise. Looking at the gritty black-and-white head-shot that was attached to the top corner, Nixon wondered if that had been the case. Staring back at him with an insolent gaze, wearing something between a grimace and a smirk was a woman - no, a girl - with shoulder-length dark hair and a circular face. He slid the photo off of the page and held it under the desk lamp.

"And naturally, division gave us a twenty-four-year-old German  _Abwehr_ defector wanted for murder in her native land," Sink said. "She has a lot of names.  _Fuchs_ , her original German code name.  _Giestermädchen_ , a pleasant nickname given to her by SS officers, which means -"

"Ghost girl," Nixon said. He laid the photo on the desk.

"Indeed," Sink said. ""Ghost" is now her SIS code name. Apparently, she has the ability to creep through enemy lines as if she were invisible."

"Comforting," Nixon said, flipping through the other pages. "She's skilled in hand-to-hand combat, has training as a sniper, is a valuable translator." He squinted at the next line of print. "And...wait a minute, she's 'highly skilled in explosives'?"

Sink raised his eyebrows as Nixon scratched his stubble. Nixon had visions of a translucent woman blowing them all up to hell in their foxholes. "What is the protocol here?"

Sink chuckled, looking just as bewildered as Nixon felt. "She's coming to Aldbourne next week on the train from London, just in time for Christmas," he said with a snort. "She wants to meet the officers of Dog, Easy, and Fox companies, since those are the three she'll be working with directly. And she's going to fall into training for a month to acclimate herself to our progress."

"Lucky us," Nixon said, but straightened up after Sink leveled a particular stern gaze at him. "That is, sir... I'm not sure how the men will take this."

"They'll take it," Sink said. "Even if she is German, even if she is a  _she_ , if I hear any word of improper behavior towards her, there will be consequences." Sink dug around in his desk drawer and emerged with an old cigar. "She's a lieutenant by grade, though the SIS uses the term 'Agent' as the designation for all its operatives. So, she'll receive the respect due towards a lieutenant, and I expect you to be her guide until she gets used to performing within the company and alongside the men."

Nixon glanced down at the photograph again. "Does she take orders from us, sir?"

"When she's stationed with us, she will," Sink replied. "But division has already told me she'll be moved around at large by the SIS."

Dick wasn't going to believe this. Neither were the rest of the men, for that matter - Nixon particularly wondered how Easy would take the infiltration of a German woman into their ranks. But, stranger things had happened. And at another glance, she wasn't half-bad looking. He raised an eyebrow and wondered if she liked whisky.

 _She_ , he thought, and then frowned. "What's her name? Her real name, I mean."

Sink chuckled. "Good question," he said. "Meet Karolina Shütze, Easy Company's new reserve lieutenant. God help us all."

 _Hello there, Karolina._ Nixon smiled to himself.  _Welcome to the circus._

He walked out of Sink's office with the folder tucked tightly under his arm, the Ghost's photo buttoned into the pocket of his jacket. The wind had turned bitingly cold since he had been in Sink's office, and he turned up the collar on his coat. Blue-grey storm clouds gathered to the east, the horizon almost black with rain.

 _By the pricking of my thumbs_ , he thought.  _Something wicked this way comes._


	2. The Bad Ones

Chapter Two

The Bad Ones

_Christmas Day, 1943_

_Aldbourne, England_

 

_Fünf, vier, drei, zwei, eins. Open your eyes._

Karolina blinked twice and cleared her vision. She was on the train to Aldbourne, sitting next to the American and across from the Italian and the Russian. If this was the beginning of a joke, it wasn't very entertaining.

The American had tried to make a joke, like Americans always did, because they truly believed they were funny.

"So, the Axis powers walk onto a train..." he had started, a stupid little grin on his face. The three women had stared at him until he stopped smiling. He had really stopped smiling when the Russian had taken a butterfly knife out of her bag and played with it aimlessly, staring at his thigh with a calculating look on her face.

They were all colleagues, expected to work together for the foreseeable future until one side lost and the other won, but Karolina had only met them an hour ago when she found them sitting in the assigned compartment that was on her ticket. Apart from the American and the Italian, who had given Karolina a brief greeting when she had sat down, no one had tried to start a conversation. She preferred it that way. She'd rather read their classified dossiers first before making any alliances.

The English countryside was dull brown and dead outside the train's window. It whizzed past her until her eyes began to burn in a familiar way, and she shut them tightly. She would not have an episode on the train. Absolutely not. Especially not in front of these people. Her hand inched down to the pocket of her black jacket. Maybe she could get away with a fix in front of them if she blamed it on a headache. That sounded plausible, but she didn't have anything to drink. She'd have to chew it then, like an aspirin.

She opened her eyes and noticed the Russian staring at her. The woman's eyes were narrowed slightly, scanning her from head to toe. "Okay?" she asked. Her teeth were perfectly white and straight.  _Rich Russian_.

"I have a headache," Karolina said. The American, because he was American, immediately started digging around in his bag, probably for an aspirin, but she held up a palm. He immediately stopped. He had green eyes, brighter than hers.  _Irish? Scottish?_

"I have medicine," she said. Her hand was in her pocket before she even asked it to grab the bottle. She covered the label with her hand as she unscrewed the top and popped one of the blue pills into her mouth.

"What kind of aspirin is that?" the Italian asked. Her eyes told Karolina that she knew, but something also told her that the Italian wouldn't tell - yet. Maybe she wanted some. Maybe she was just toying with her for fun.

Karolina shrugged. "The kind they gave me," she said, slipping the bottle back into her pocket. She ground down on the pill and her nose twitched at the bitterness of the cloying powder.

The Italian nodded and leaned back, switching her gaze to the American. "What?" she asked him, her blue eyes glinting.

The American was watching all of them, his eyes flickering back and forth across the compartment. "Well, now that we're all talking to each other..."

"We're not talking to each other," said the Russian. She tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear.

"I would like to, considering we're all working together, and I've never met any of you," he said. The women exchanged glances and the Russian smirked. The American sighed.

"My name is Katya," the Russian said. She cracked a few knuckles. "Satisfied?"

"Not really, but fine," he said. The Italian snorted.

"Ella," she said. She smiled in a way that made Karolina nervous.

The American looked at Karolina expectantly. She took a breath, ready to give him her regular name like the rest of them had, but the Russian - Katya - beat her to it.

" _Geistermädchen_ ," she said, twirling her knife. She twisted it shut with a clink of metal against metal. "I know who you are."

The Italian, Ella, gave Karolina an appraising look. "You're the Ghost?"

 _Fünf, vier, drei, zwei, eins._  She counted down from five before she spoke. "Some people call me that."

Katya was nodding slowly, drinking her in. "I admire your work," she said. "Killing Germans."

Karolina bit the inside of her lip. "I kill Nazis," she corrected.

There was an electricity running through the compartment, and the American felt it. He glanced between them, keeping an eye on Katya's sheathed knife. Ella was trying to fight a grin from taking over her face and failing.

"Is it not the same thing?" Katya said, rubbing the edge of her knife with her thumb. "They are both German. They both believe that Germans are superior. Their skulls sound the same when you crush them under your wagon wheels in the winter."

This one was going to be the one that held a pillow over Karolina's face when she slept. Russians did things like that, the snakes. Ella was chuckling to herself as she pulled a sandwich from her bag.

"You, you are crazy," she said, pointing at Katya. She nodded her head at Karolina. "You, you're less crazy, but you're dangerous." She looked across the compartment at the American. "I hope you're crazy, too. You look scared."

The American did look nervous. He nodded, then stopped and thought about it, and shook his head. "Not crazy," he said. "Not like that. Anyway, I'm Mark." Ella raised an eyebrow. "Wonderful to meet all of you. I, um, this was a great start." He grimaced and took a flask out of his pocket and swigged.

Silence engulfed the compartment once more. Ella bit into her sandwich, Katya took out a novel and thumbed through the pages, and Karolina leaned back and felt the pill kick in. Her blood pulsed wildly in her arms and legs and the ticking sound in her head faded into the noise of the train's wheels bumping along the tracks.

* * *

Nixon felt the strangest sensation in the pit of his stomach as the noon train from London rolled to a stop at the Aldbourne station. He felt jittery, as if he were meeting goddamn Roosevelt himself, but the twisting of his gut brought on a feeling of dread, as if he was about to receive a basket of vipers and told to make a jump rope out of them.  _Was he nervous?_  He wouldn't allow himself to accept the possibility that he could be nervous about meeting Shütze. She was just a  _person_ , he kept reminding himself. He was the only one who knew about her colorful resume, apart from Dick, who was standing beside him, impassively looking off into the field next to the station.

Dick had been the only man in Easy Company to take the news of Shütze's arrival calmly, as Nixon knew he would. He had sat on the bed in his billet for thirty minutes flipping through Karolina's dossier in silence with a concentrated look on his face, every now and then raising an eyebrow. When he was finished, he sat the folder aside and gave Nixon a shrug. "Well, she seems qualified," he said thoughtfully, and Nixon had erupted in laughter and handed over her photo from his pocket. Dick regarded it for a moment before he chuckled and handed it back to Nixon with a knowing look. "You might want to keep that in the folder. I'd hate to see what she would do to you if she found that on your person."

The rest of the men, however... they weren't too thrilled.

"She's German?" Johnny Martin had asked, his face in a scowl behind his cigarette.

"She's a  _broad?_ " Luz said, looking like he was both thrilled and terrified all at once.

"She's an ex-Nazi  _spy_?" said Malarkey. Next to him, Liebgott spat on the floor.

Nixon had done his best to explain that it was neither Colonel Sink's nor his decision to implement this new plan and that  _yes_ , Shütze had been an operative of the Reich but had defected and done things that had proven her loyalty to the Allied forces - something he should  _not_ have said in hindsight, after watching their eyes glint with that tantalizing piece of information - but she was also a ranked member of the SIS who registered in at a lieutenant grade and that she deserved respect, and if she didn't get it, Sink would personally have all their asses.

The men had wanted more information, but he couldn't give it to them. It was classified. Maybe if she felt like telling them herself, he had said, trying to placate them, then they would find out,  _maybe_ , if they acted like gentlemen. Luz had leaned back and immediately began to plot something with Malarkey, Muck and Penkala. Liebgott shoved himself to his feet and stormed out of the building. Martin and Randleman and Guarnere put their heads together and muttered to each other. Nixon had sighed and left the mess hall to whispers and incredulous laughter.

The train screeched to a halt and Nixon watched Dick square his shoulders. He laughed and elbowed his friend in the side. Dick gave him a sideways look. "Nervous?"

Dick sighed. "Not nervous, just..." He searched for the right word for a moment. "Wary."

"I know what you mean," Nixon said. The passengers were beginning to descend from the cars, normal war-time women with normal skirts and dresses and stockings made from imitation silk. He wondered if Shütze would be wearing a dress. The idea seemed ludicrous.

"Do you think we'll know her when we see her?" Nixon asked. "I mean, does she know what we look like? What if we both miss each other? How are we-"

Dick interrupted him with a poke. "I think that's them."

Not one, but four people were walking down the far end of the platform towards them. One was a man, towering over his companions, easily clocking in over six feet, and the other three were women. They were all walking beside each other, not so much pushing the other passengers out of the way as they were subconsciously telling everyone else on the platform to  _move, or else,_ and it was working. Nixon realized that they were scanning, a classic intelligence formation, looking for any threats. They were dressed head to toe in black: black pea-coats, black boots laced over black pants, black leather belts, black dress shirts with not a single military declaration on them. People averted their eyes as they passed by.

They were intimidating. That is until the man stumbled over a raised plank on the platform and grabbed on to the blonde woman beside him, who shoved him off of her with a pointed finger.

Dick chuckled beside Nixon, and the spell was broken. He regarded them with a new eye. He picked out Shütze immediately - she was the only one with short dark hair, her eyes flickering between the faces on the platform, her hand fidgeting near one of the pockets of her coat. She looked at him, glanced over at Dick, and then gave Nixon the smallest of smiles.

"Hi there," said the man, ruffling the back of his hair and giving both of them friendly looks. "I imagine you two are our ride to base?"

Dick shook the man's offered hand. "I think there's been a mistake. We were only expecting Agent Shütze?"

The dark-haired girl stepped forward from the end of the line. "Headquarters decided to send the rest of the operatives with me." Her voice carried the slightest hint of an accent, her  _d_ 's peppered with the edge of a hard  _t_. She regarded Nixon and Dick for a moment before saluting them in the American way. "Sirs," she added, in afterthought.

Dick returned her salute but stuck out his hand as well. "No need for that, agent. We're lieutenants as well, same respective rank." Shütze took his hand and gave it one pump before releasing it. "I'm Lieutenant Winters, this is Lieutenant Nixon, and we're both from Easy Company, 101st Battalion."

"Pleasure," said the blonde woman, her accent thick and unidentifiable until she smiled broadly at Nixon. "I'm Medvedeva."

"I'm Ella Abruzza," said the brown-haired girl with a smile, but she crossed her arms over her chest, not interested in the least in shaking hands. Nixon smirked at Dick's bewildered look.

"I'm Agent Longshore," said the American man, seeming entirely overwhelmed. "Have you seen the Frenchman and the Austrian?"

"No, we haven't," said Dick. "Were they expected as well?"

The Russian woman laughed. "They ran off, probably. They're lovers."

The American man gave her a sideways look and cleared his throat. "That's not what happened," he said, an edge to his voice. "They're might just be...lost."

There was a beat of silence for a second as they all considered the probability of spies getting lost. Ella laughed again, slapping her thigh. "They're the bad ones," she said with a grin. "No?"

* * *

All in all, they were able to fit into one jeep, but Karolina ended up tightly packed between Nixon and Mark. Both men seemed on edge and tried their best to keep their thighs from touching hers. Nixon flinched when the jeep ran over a pothole and his leg bounced into her own. "Sorry," he said out of the corner of his mouth. Karolina sighed. He had read her file, she could tell. People always treated her differently after they discovered what she had done.

She was already making a list in her head. Winters seemed responsible, sober, kind. He would be a good leader. Nixon she would have to investigate. She wondered where he kept the key to the filing cabinet that stored his information - he looked like the type of man to keep a filing cabinet, albeit a messy one. Mark had good intentions but seemed naive. Ella was on the edge of a hysterical breakdown. Katya would most likely kill her if she got the chance.

The drive into Aldbourne was short. On the way there, they passed men on Christmas leave, each group giving their car a bewildered stare as they drove by. Karolina knew that she wasn't a welcome addition. The men in Easy Company would no doubt dislike her on sight, and perhaps hate her for being German. The thought made her uneasy, but she was used to receiving ugly looks from strangers. She would get by like she always had - by ignoring the comments, and if someone wanted to get physical over their issues with her, she'd happily oblige them.

She reached into her pocket for the package of peppermints she had stolen from Mark's bag as he was loading his luggage into the overhead bins. Nixon felt her jostling movement and procured a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and offered them to her.

"No thank you," she said, but gave him a small smile. "I do not smoke."

Katya, who was on her fourth cigarette, scoffed behind her.

"Good for you," he said, tucking the cigarettes back into his pocket. "It's bad for you anyway." He leaned back, seeming more comfortable than before. "Are any of you hungry? We could stop off in the mess hall before officially meeting the men."

"I'm not hungry," Karolina said. She hadn't had a single thing to eat that day. It was another strange side effect of the medicine.

"Speak for yourself," Mark said jovially. "I'm famished."

Ella reached back and shoved her half-eaten sandwich at him. " _Panino_?"

He took it gingerly, inspecting the meat. "What's in it?"

"Provolone and salami," she said with an eye-roll. " _Naturalmente_."

Mark didn't look thrilled, but he accepted it. "Thank you," he said. He took a little bite and chewed. "Pretty good."

They pulled to a stop alongside an old theater that a line of men were filing into, their angry complaints audible over the slam of the front door. A group of officers in dress uniform stood to the side of the theater, their decorations glinting in the morning sun. Karolina stepped out of the jeep after Nixon and gave the group a once-over.

One of them was an older man, no doubt the colonel. Another was short with curly hair and a gaped-tooth grin, which he shot at them as he shoved his hands in his pockets. The other was tall and dark-haired, smoking a cigarette up against the wall of the theater. Winters and Nixon walked over and joined them, but Karolina stayed by the jeep with the operatives.

"They weren't expecting us," Mark said. "I think this is all for you, Shütze."

Karolina sincerely hoped not.

"You're right," said Katya, smirking at the officers. "Wonder what we will do?"

"Agent Shütze?" called out the colonel, and the group of men turned towards her, all with curious looks on their faces. She gave her operatives a sideways glance that made Ella erupt into a fit of snickers and walked over to the men.

The colonel gave her a long look. "You are Karolina Schütze?"

Karolina returned his expression. "Yes."

The small curly-haired man snorted, and her eyes pivoted towards him. He inched back a little. "Welcome to the 101st Airborne Division, and to Dog, Easy, and Fox companies, respectively," the colonel said. "I hope your trip from London was pleasant."

It was clear that none of them had any clue what to say to her. She would have to go on the offensive. She twisted her mouth into a neutral smile and aimed it at the colonel. "It was fine, thank you."

Colonel Sink's head tilted as he listened to the lilt in her tone. "We would like to formally introduce you to the men of the companies before you get settled in," he said. "But first, I wanted to make you acquainted with our officers." He gestured to the men beside him. "Lieutenants Nixon and Winters you've already met, they're with Easy Company. So is Lieutenant Welsh." The curly haired man gave a little wave. "Lieutenant Speirs is with Dog Company." The man leaning against the wall gave her a squinted look and a nod. She nodded back. "And I am Colonel Sink, battalion commander, although you probably have figured that out by now."

"I have," she said. She froze the genial smile on her face as her eyes went from one man to the next.  _Mostly harmless,_ she thought, regarding the man called Speirs leaning against the wall.  _Somewhat._ "I am glad to finally meet all of you."

"To be clear, agent, the men will be somewhat...hesitant to accept this situation," Colonel Sink said. Speirs led the group to the front of the theater, where men were still waiting to get inside. A group at the door paused and stepped back to let Colonel Sink inside first, giving Karolina an obvious once-over. She stared at them until they looked away. "But I am hopeful that we will find this arrangement mutually beneficial."

The theater was packed. It was clear that more than Fox, Easy, and Dog companies had chosen to attend this introduction, all out of curiosity and, if she read the room right, hostility. No doubt she was their first glimpse of a German. No doubt they wanted to tear her apart.

Nixon let out a low whistle. "You're popular already," he said.

Karolina looked at him over her shoulder. "Not popular," she said. "The exact opposite."

On stage, the men resembled an ocean, even though she knew there couldn't be more than two hundred of them present. The other operatives filed onto stage behind her. Katya looked nervous, her hand in her coat pocket, no doubt holding her butterfly knife. Mark looked thrilled, and Ella looked bored. Karolina stood behind Colonel Sink as he introduced their group.

"In our great experiment in the creation of a paratrooper force, we add yet another experiment, one that I am sure will prove vital," Colonel Sink said to a silent audience. "It is my pleasure to introduce to you Agent Karolina Shütze, an envoy from the SIS in London." He paused and motioned for her to step forward, and she obliged him. "She is here to supplement Dog, Easy, and Fox companies' knowledge of combat. Her skills are invaluable to us."

Karolina nodded at the colonel, but he motioned at her as he stepped back. She looked at him and he nodded again at the audience. This was not part of the deal. She didn't come here to make speeches. But if he wanted her to say something? Then she would say something.

She took a deep breath and sighed through her nose. "I understand that my presence here is the last thing any of you anticipated in your career as soldiers. It is certainly the last thing I anticipated in my career as an intelligence operative for the Allied forces, and I am certainly out of sorts with this arrangement as you all."

There was a beat of silence before she smirked down at the stage beneath her boots and continued. "No doubt all of you have a problem with the fact I am German. I will be frank with you. I am not too fond of Americans." Someone snorted in the audience. She wondered what color Colonel Sink's face was at the moment. "In my opinion, you all are five years late. But, you are here now, so I suppose that is what counts."

"I do look forward to working with you and seeing what you have accomplished." Ella wheezed behind her, and the first genuine smile of the day made its way onto Karolina's face. "Maybe I can teach you how to make poisonous mustard gas. Maybe you can teach me how to play darts. We shall see."

She turned around and nodded at Colonel Sink, who had turned purple. Nixon was biting his knuckle to keep from laughing, and Winters looked as if he were in a dream. Mark looked like he wanted to die on the spot. She shot one last glance at the audience and took her place next to her fellow operatives.

"Not bad," Katya said. "But you forgot to mention the part where they all die in France."


	3. Philosophy 101

Chapter Three

Philosophy 101

 

George Luz leaned back in his seat and watched the German broad fall into line with the other spies. The men beside him were silent, but then a great wave of whispers took over the theater, every man leaning towards his neighbor and wondering who the hell this woman thought she was.

"Why do I feel like someone just upended a garbage can over my head?" Malarkey whispered.

"Because she just shit all over us," said Liebgott, who looked like he wanted to commit a homicide.

Guarnere was chuckling beside Malarkey, and the three of them stared at him until he stopped. "What?" he said. "I thought that was hilarious."

"What about that was hilarious to you?" Luz said.

"She didn't dish out no bullshit. You know Sink wanted her to say some super cheerful shit about "working together", but that broad just got up there and wrecked it," he chuckled one last time. "I appreciate someone who says  _fuck you_ to the authorities."

Luz didn't know what to think. Agent Shootsuh - Shutsah? Schootza? - was standing next to her friends, completely relaxed, her face perfectly blank. The blonde one leaned over and whispered in her ear. The German broad grimaced and turned her back ever-so-slightly to the blonde.

"If they think that we're gonna welcome some ex-Nazi into our company with open arms..." Liebgott started but didn't finish.

"The Nazi thing is a little troubling," Malarkey said.

"A little  _troubling_?" said Luz. "I'm not gonna mess with her. I'd stay out of her way."

"She's just a woman," Johnny Martin said from the row behind them. "What's she gonna do? Goose-step us to death?"

"She just said she doesn't like Americans," Tab said. "And said that she knows we don't like her. I'm not gonna be her buddy."

There were murmurs of agreement at that. Luz took a deep breath and exhaled. This was just another stupid layer of Army protocol that made getting to Europe that more difficult. He looked at the broad again. She was young, he thought, but acted much older. She wasn't horrible looking, either. Too bad she was German.

"You guys are idiots," Guarnere said, leaning back in his seat. "I wanna know how to make mustard gas."

* * *

Karolina left the theater with the feeling of a target pinned firmly to her back and sighed. It was the best course of action. She had learned that pretending to feel one way while hiding true intent usually turned out for the worst. The last time she had masked her inner feelings, she had been recruited into the  _Abwehr_. These men would know where she stood from the beginning.

She expected none of the officers to give her the time of day afterwards. She even hoped vaguely that Sink would be so angry that he'd send her back to London and she could resume her plans. But once they had all exited the building, Nixon had walked up to her and clasped her on the shoulder. She flinched at the contact, and he quickly removed his hand.

"Sorry," he said. He looked as if he meant it. "Just wanted to say that in all my time in the airborne, that was the most entertaining speech I've heard."

The one named Welsh stopped beside Nixon and gave her an appraising look. "You know, I've heard the Germans were straightforward, but that was something else." He smiled at her brightly. "I think you'll fit right in."

Karolina looked at them in disbelief. They didn't move, clearly expecting her to say something. She changed the topic. "What do I do now?"

"We find your billet," Nixon said, motioning for her to follow him. He walked back to jeep and hefted her bag towards her, pointing to town. "Follow me. And grab that little Italian girl, too. She's your roommate." He laughed at the disgusted look on her face.

" _Scheiße,_ " she whispered, and Nixon laughed harder. She turned with a sigh and looked over at Ella, who was happily chatting up a reluctant looking Winters by the theater door. "Abruzza, we are going. Together."

Ella talked nonstop on their way into town, critiquing the people she passed and rating the handsomeness of the soldiers she saw, asking questions about English food and drink and whether anyone had any wine, wondering why the sky was so cloudy and complaining about how cold it was, thinking aloud about the weather patterns and then announced to the group that she would start testing various plants for poisons immediately to see how they compared to Italian flora and fauna.

Nixon looked over at Karolina, utterly horrified. She raised her eyebrows and turned back to the road in front of her, leaving him to deal with Ella's musings.

The girls were to stay in the loft above a garage that was attached to Nixon's billet. The host and her husband didn't seem thrilled when Karolina and Ella stepped into their kitchen, dressed in black like grim reapers and introduced themselves with their foreign accents. The matronly woman shoved a stack of towels in their direction, told them breakfast was served at seven, and slammed the door in their faces.

"It's a bad time to be Italian," Ella said to Nixon. She looked over at Karolina. "And German, especially."

Karolina stared up at the sky. It looked as if it would snow. "What is the schedule?"

"Maneuvers start at ten in the morning," Nixon said, glancing up at the sky to see what she was staring at. "Lunch is at one in the afternoon, and then field training lasts until dinner. We do night maneuvers on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and lucky for us tomorrow is Monday. But dinner is at seven tonight." He looked down at his watch. "I'll come get both of you in a few hours and we'll walk over there."

Karolina looked over at Nixon. Despite everything she had said, and everything he probably knew about her, he was still polite.  _Unstarched collar. Pale skin. Darkness under the eyes._ He was social by nature, then. He cocked his head and gave her a confused look.

"Thank you," she said, and he blinked. "You are very hospitable to us. I can tell that you mean well."

He struggled for words. "You're welcome," he said. "I'm just happy we finally have someone around here who knows what they're doing." He nodded at Ella. "See you two at dinner time."

* * *

Ella flopped on her trundle bed and looked over at Karolina, who pretended as if she couldn't see the Italian staring at her. The pill was wearing off - she felt looser, more relaxed, exhausted. She rubbed her temple and closed her eyes.

"I heard about you before," Ella said. Karolina opened an eye and looked over at her. "I never imagined I'd be sharing a room with you."

"You can always request another roommate," Karolina replied. It had happened before - she had cycled through three roommates in London.

"No, I like you," Ella said, and Karolina propped herself up on her elbows to give the other woman a look of disbelief. "I mean it! You're different than what I thought you'd be."

Karolina ran her tongue across her teeth. "Should I even ask what you mean by that?"

Ella shrugged. "I thought you'd be this battle-axe. But you are very pretty. You are the prettiest German I've ever seen." She scratched her scalp with her fingernails. "You don't look like a German, though."

Karolina rolled over and faced the wall. "Please stop talking."

* * *

Nixon sat in his room a few yards away from where the two operatives napped and flipped back through Karolina's folder. There was something that Sink had said to him days ago, something that was bothering him that he couldn't put his finger on.

Sink had said that she was wanted by the Reich for murder, but there wasn't anything in the file folder about her murdering anyone. All there was that might fit the bill was a mugshot, dated five years previous, where Karolina posed with a numbered sign that had her first and last name emblazoned on the front. In the photo, she wore the hint of the smile, the same smile she had given him in the train depot. She certainly didn't look like she was going to jail for murder.

He flipped the photo over. There was nothing on the back, nothing that could account for the photo's existence. He tossed the photo onto the bedspread and sighed.

No doubt she knew that he knew about her. It was the first thing he'd assume, if he were in her place. He'd have to ask her then, maybe, if they were ever friends.  _Friends_ , he thought to himself with a snort.  _Mom, meet my newest friend, Karolina - she used to be a Nazi!_

She didn't seem like a Nazi though, or, more appropriately, anyone who would have been a Nazi. She probably hadn't had a choice. She was twenty-four and would have been a minor when Hitler took over. Her parents must have forced her into it. But how did she escape Germany?

He had a lot of questions. He pulled a yellow pad towards him, the one he kept on his bedside table, and began to write them down.

* * *

Karolina woke to the sound of Ella's clapping hands above her head. She rolled over and kicked out a foot at the Italian, who jumped out of the way but stopped clapping.

"Sorry," she said. "I had to wake you up. I didn't want to touch you. I had a roommate once who fought in her sleep. She would bite the pillow and punch you in the face if you tried to stop her."

She felt dehydrated and unsteady and tried a sip of water from the pitcher between their bed frames while Ella pinned up her hair in the mirror. She eyeballed the glass before holding it to her lips.

"It's not poisoned, I already checked," Ella said, watching her reflection. "I don't think the English are crafty enough to think of poison."

Karolina's hair was a mess, and she brushed it back into a short ponytail before leaving the room. They both were downstairs at a quarter till seven to wait for Nixon. Ella walked among the dead flower beds in the garden, picking up a brown leaf every now and then for a closer look.

Nixon emerged disheveled but noticeably more rested. "Alright, let's get going," he said, and they fell in with his brisk pace. "I'm absolutely starving. And you two are lucky enough to get the remains of Christmas dinner."

"Who do we eat beside?" she asked, and when Nixon looked puzzled, she reformatted the question in her head. "I mean, who do we eat with?"

"Oh," Nixon said. "You can eat with the officers. Sometimes we eat with the men, but I highly doubt they'll want to eat with you tonight. Not after that speech."

She stiffened and he laughed. "You've probably wounded a lot of egos, Agent Shütze. You might hold the world record for offending so many men in the span of five minutes."

"It's no way to make friends," Ella said beside her.

"We're not here to make friends," she grumbled.

"Well, I want to make friends!" Ella said, indignant, and Nixon laughed. "I need new friends."

"What happened to your old friends?" Nixon said. Ella caught Karolina's eye and they both were silent for a moment. Nixon looked at both of them before something clicked in his eyes. "Oh."

"Probably dead," Ella said sympathetically. "I think most of them are. But don't worry. I know Americans don't think about those things."

* * *

Ron Speirs broke off from his men in the line for food and made a beeline for Winters, who was sitting by himself at a table, reading the London Times and chewing slowly. The redhead looked up as Speirs sat down across from him, throwing his garrison cap down on the table.

"Ron," Winters said neutrally. "How are you?"

"Why do three companies share one operative?" he said in a low voice. "That doesn't make sense."

"Nothing in the Army makes sense," Winters replied.

Ron drummed his fingers on the table, unsatisfied with his answer. "There should be one operative per company," he said. "There's no way they're going to be able to handle all of us." Winters looked up and took another bite of green beans. "And we both know Easy gets all the nice things around here."

"Take it up with Colonel Sink," Winters said. "Maybe he'll get another SIS agent down here for you. You don't like Shütze?"

"We need men," Ron said. "Not women. War isn't a place for women."

"You see, that's what everyone says," said Ella, sitting down on the bench beside him. "But I think it's opposite, right? Men cannot handle war. They always cry for their mamas when they are bleeding on the ground."

Ron watched Shütze as she chose the opposite side of the table next to Winters, away from him and Ella.

"Women can live through war," Ella said, nodding to herself. "They go on because they know they must. They can, hmm, adapt? Yes, adapt. Men, no. Men go crazy for war."

Ella smiled brightly at everyone until she realized that she didn't have food. "Food!" she said, getting to her feet. "I'll get you some,  _cara_ Lina." She was so pleased with her pun that she didn't see Shütze shaking her head at her.

Nixon sat down in Ella's empty spot, sighing. "How do you keep up with her?" he asked Shütze.

Shütze shrugged and went back to scanning the room with her eyes. "I only met her today," she said. A piece of hair had fallen loose from her ponytail, and she tucked it behind her ear. "If she doesn't stop talking I'll kill her."

Winters choked on a pea and looked at Shütze from the corner of his eye. The girl seemed to read his mind, and she scoffed lightly, reaching out a finger to trace the lines in the wooden table. "A joke," she said softly.

Nixon laughed a few seconds too late, and Ron cringed. Clearly they knew something about Shütze that he didn't, and judging by the expression on the girl's face, Shütze was on to them.

"Interesting speech," he said. Shütze looked over at him and the corners of her lips turned up in the smallest of mocking smiles. "Very blunt."

"I prefer to get to the point," she said. "Saves time."

"Clearly," he said. Ella returned with two plates and slid one in front of Shütze. A pinprick of gravy dropped from the side of the plate and Shütze wiped it up with a napkin. She suddenly looked up at him, as if he had said something fascinating, and she turned her head to the side as she held his gaze.

"You can prove me wrong," she said, staring him down. Winters had stopped eating to watch the confrontation. "I am not God. My word is not infallible. My opinions do not tilt the Earth on its axis."

Speirs felt his stomach tighten. "We will," he said. "I'll make sure you change your mind, Kraut."

Nixon and Ella leaned back from the table in surprise. Shütze grinned for a moment before she blinked and melted back into her seat. "Good," she said, picking up her knife and twirling it with her fingers. "I want you to."

It took a moment for him to comprehend what she had said through the sound of his pulse beating in his ears. Everyone at the table seemed lost. "What do you mean?"

Shütze bit into her pork chop. "I want you to change my mind," she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "What's your endgame?"

 _Being commander of Easy Company,_  he thought to himself, but he'd never say that aloud. "Being the best," he said instead.

Shütze nodded. "Me too. I wanted to be the best German operative. I am close to getting there." She took a sip of water. "You want to be the best soldier in the battalion. Are you close to getting there?"

He opened his mouth to reply, but she held up a finger. "Rhetorical," she said. "The answer is no. You are not close to getting there."

He never so much wanted to punch a woman in the face before. Nixon cut in before Speirs could start cussing her out. "Agent Schütze, what's your point?"

"You can practice field maneuvers all day," she said. "You can hike over every English hill and pretend to capture as many Germans as you want." She ran her tongue across her teeth. "But if you spend your time thinking of the romance of war, the adventure of being the best, you will not last past the first battle."

Ella tore apart a piece of her dinner roll and shoved it into her mouth. Shütze threw her roll across the table and Ella caught it with one hand. She gave them all a frank look. "You are learning how to be soldiers. Maybe you are the best soldiers. Maybe you know all the moves and hand signs, maybe you dream of being in war when you sleep. But soldiers don't win wars. Killers win wars. That's why Germany is winning, and why the Allies are losing. The Allies don't want to be killers, they are too proud to think of themselves that way. They want to stand for nobility and goodness." She paused and sipped at her water. "There is no nobility in war, there is no goodness. The Army will teach you to be soldiers. I will teach you to be killers."

Nixon looked like someone had just slapped him across the face with a philosophy textbook. "That is the most twisted thing I've ever heard," he said, but he grinned as he said it.

"I agree," said Ella. Everyone at the table looked at her. "I am a killer."

"Certainly," Shütze said. "And so must all of you be, if you want to live. If you want to die..." She shrugged, left the inevitable end hanging in the air around them. "So be it. I want you to be the best killers, and I will come with you to Europe. Because I am here for one thing."

"To kill Nazis?" Nixon guessed.

She pointed her knife at him. "Exactly," she said with a little jab. "There is nothing else to do." She drained her glass of water and set it down on the table. "I'm going to invite the men on a dawn outing."

She rose up from the table and marched over to where the men of Easy Company had been sitting. Ron had watched them glance over in their direction every now and then and heard a few bursts of cruel laughter from them. He turned in his seat and watched her put her hands on her hips. The table of men fell silent.

"Men," she said as they stared up at her with wariness and hostility. "I understand from your commanding officers that you do not like me. That's fine."

"I like you," said Guarnere, and the table erupted in shouts and shoves aimed towards Guarnere's direction.

"I am going into the woods at dawn to rig trip wires to grenades on trees," she said, and a hush fell over them. Speirs watched Luz give Malarkey a sideways glance and Malarkey returned it. "If you want to learn how to do this, come. If you don't want to learn how to do this, please avoid trip wires in the future."

After a beat of silence, she smiled and walked out of the mess hall, letting the door bang shut behind her. "Hell yeah," Guarnere said, and this time the men didn't push him around.

Speirs avoided the eyes of everyone at the table. Ella chewed on her roll and dug into the green beans. Winters picked up his fork again and stabbed it into his pork chop.

"She has got to stop making speeches," Nixon said to himself.

"She has a point," Winters said. "It's...deeply, morally wrong, but it's true."

Ron said nothing. He was too busy trying to figure out how someone trip-wired a tree with grenades.


	4. The Knock-Out

Chapter Four

The Knock-Out

 

_"You should be nicer to them, Lina."_

She knew he'd come. No matter where she went, where she slept, Philippe always found her.

She rose up from the layers of blankets that covered her and blinked the fog out of her eyes. He was sitting on the foot of her bed, looking at the window, where the moonlight was obscured by a flimsy blackout curtain. He smelled of gun metal and grave rot.

 _"Why do you care?"_ she said. The outline of his head turned towards her in the darkness.

 _"I know what you're up to,"_ he replied. She leaned back against the metal headboard and the cold steel singed her between the shoulders.  _"You'll get caught."_

 _"It doesn't matter anymore,"_  she said. He shook his head.  _"There's nothing left. They killed you. They ruined our town."_

 _"Don't drag these men down with you_ , _"_ he said.

She stiffened.  _"I'm going to teach them to survive,"_ she said.

_"Death is not the end, Lina."_

The curtain was ripped back from the window and light filled Philippe's face. He had lost most of the skin under his eyes and his nose was halfway gone. His lips were black lines, withered away from his teeth to form a frozen smile. She stared at him as the sound of the ocean filled her ears.

Ella was standing next to her bed, a knife held in her hand. "Who are you talking to?"

She blinked, and he was gone. Karolina reached out a hand and lowered the knife in Ella's fist. "No one," she said. "I was having a dream."

Ella scowled. "A dream where you sit up in the middle of the night and speak to the invisible?" She turned and tossed the knife onto her bedside table, where it clattered against the lamp. "I see why you often need a new roommate."

"Sorry," she said. "I do it sometimes."

Ella turned back the covers and settled back into her bed. The moonlight had turned her skin silver and she tucked her hand underneath her head on her pillow. "I talk to my mother at night," she said.

Karolina sank back down into her bed. She wondered if Philippe was still near, listening to the conversation. "Oh."

"Yes," Ella said. "She died in '38. The fascists shot her in the back of the head in our house."

Karolina turned her face into the pillow. "I'm sorry," she said.

"They were our neighbors," she said. "Mama sends me warnings, sometimes. Is it the same for you?"

"It was just a bad dream," she said. Across the room, Ella sighed, and Karolina heard the springs in her mattress squeak. Silence crept back into the room, and she closed her eyes.

When she opened them next, the dawn light had begun to shine in her face.

* * *

There were six men waiting for her in the forest, all from Easy Company. They kept shifting from one foot to the other, turning their heads at every snap of a twig and birdsong, looking as if they weren't quite sure why they decided to come and deeply regretting the decision to do so. Karolina walked up behind them, testing to see how close she could come before they noticed her. A man with kind eyes happened to glance behind him and skittered backwards when she appeared in his peripheral vision.

"Jesus Christ!" The other men jumped as he yelled, all of them clutching their sidearms. She sighed and cracked her neck.

"Lesson one," she said, walking around to face them. "This is a bad formation. The woods are a hiding place. How do you prevent someone from attacking from behind?"

She watched them think about it, then smiled when they formed a circle with their backs to each other, looking out in every direction. "Exactly," she said with a smile. "Sometimes the simple things are the obvious ones."

She threw down her pack and stretched her arms above her head. "I am pleased you came," she said. "I knew most of you would not. But motivation comes from the strangest source."

They were all looking at her as if she were a complicated math problem. She sighed. "You had a leader... his name was Sobel, correct?"

One of the men groaned and the kind-eyed man gave him a look. "Yes, we did. He was reassigned."

"Because he was a bad leader," Karolina stated. "But what I read told me that he was a good motivator, right?"

There was a beat of silence, and then one of them burst out into laughter. It was the man who was so eager to tell her that he liked her the night before. "Holy shit," he said. "Are you trying to pull a Sobel on us?"

"Oh my God," said the short, brown-haired man. "She is."

"Sobel could not read a map," Karolina said.

"Among other things," replied the redhead man.

"But he made you into the most qualified company in the paratroopers," she said. "And the headquarters has so much faith in you that they assigned me to come here and teach you to blow things up."

She reached down and pulled a grenade out of the pocket of her bag. The men backed up a little, and she rolled it in her hand, watching the way the early sunlight glinted off the metal. "What are your names?"

"I'm Bill Guarnere," said the eager one. "You can call me 'Wild Bill', if you want."

The dark-haired, silent one rolled his eyes and she looked at him expectantly. "Toye," he said. "Joe Toye."

"Don Malarkey," said the redheaded man.

"George Luz," said the short one.

"Johnny Martin," said the grumpy-looking man.

"Carwood Lipton," said the one with kind eyes.

Karolina nodded to herself, memorizing their faces. "I am Karolina Schütze," she said. "You can call me Schütze, or," she paused, seeing the short one open his mouth, "if that's too difficult for you to pronounce, then you can call me Agent. I have many other names I could use, but I use my own."

"I will call you by your last names," she said. "Titles always get in the way. Respect comes in time."

She held up the grenade and twisted it in her hand. "We call this a grenade," she said. "It has many names.  _Granate_ , in German.  _La grenade_ , in French." She tossed it to Guarnere, who caught it gingerly. "We look at it and say, "That is for exploding your enemy", we throw it in battle, we give it one use."

"But it could be used in other ways," said Lipton.

"Yes," she said. "Just like people, we label them and tell them, "This is what you are, what you will do", and forget that they can do many other things."

"So, if you can use grenades in trip wires, what else can you use them for?" said Malarkey, his interest piqued.

She smiled. "I'll show you."

* * *

Nixon jolted awake. In the distance, bombs fell. Wait, not bombs. Bombs shook houses and people out of bed. These noises were smaller, but they were still explosions.

He hopped into pants and threw on a white PT shirt that had been under his bed for a few days and ran down the stairs of his billet and out the front door. He realized he was barefoot and skidded to a stop at the edge of the house's garden.

"What are you doing?" Ella stood next to the garage, wearing her black boots and a silk kimono, smoking a cigarette. He looked at her in confusion and whipped his head back towards the woods after another explosion.

"What's going on?" he said.

"Karolina is doing the grenades," she said calmly. She extinguished her cigarette on the side of the garage, leaving a black dot.

Nixon wiped a hand over his face. "Someone actually took her up on that?" he said. "And she was serious?"

Ella raised an eyebrow at him and snorted. "Does she look like someone who is not serious?" She tightened the kimono around her waist and walked back into the garage, shutting the door behind her.

* * *

Apparently, the way one attached grenades to trees was with fishing line tied around the base of the trunk and stuck to the outside of the grenade with chewing gum. More fishing line was then looped through the rings of the pins and strung just tight enough to hover over the ground, right above where a very unlucky man's ankle would pull at the grenades. The trees would explode in half, raining down pieces of trunks and branches upon the man's head, and maybe take off an arm or leg if they were close to the tree.

Ron watched this through his binoculars from thirty yards away. Guarnere threw a fallen branch onto the wire, running doggedly from the resulting explosion with a thrilled look on his face. The two pine trees that Shütze had chosen for her victims burst in the air, raining down needles on the group's head.

He clenched his teeth and pulled out the field notebook he kept in the pocket of his jacket. He detached the pencil from its holder and scribbled down a few notes.

* * *

Karolina collected Ella at the front of their house just before ten. She was leaning on the lamppost in front of the street, chewing on a piece of toast. She held out an extra slice to Karolina, and she took it from the girl's hand, careful not to get the purple jam all over her sleeve.

"I knew you wouldn't come to breakfast," Ella said. The sun rising in the sky without a cloud in sight, illuminating the frost on the grass in the fields, making them sparkle like crystals. "How were grenades?"

Karolina took a bite of the toast. The jam was blackberry, with the slightest hint of bitterness, like the cyanide in almonds. She swallowed and wiped her lips. "Six showed up," she said. "They enjoyed themselves, I think."

"Making friends!" Ella said, giving her elbow a pat. "Even though you said you wouldn't."

"Not friends," Karolina said. "Gaining trust."

Ella scrunched her face at Karolina and mumbled something in Italian. "I am going to make so many friends in Able and Baker and Charlie. Everyone wants to know how to poison people."

Karolina shook her head and picked up the pace.

Today, the mortar teams had gathered to do target practice in a field outside of an old manor home that served as battalion headquarters. Karolina spied Mark and Katya standing off to the side of the soldiers, giving them their space and whispering to one another. She and Ella made a beeline to them while the teams from other companies sat up their gear and waited for their instructors. Karolina didn't miss the occasional dirty look aimed her way or towards Katya and Mark.

"I hope you're happy," Katya said, a cigarette dangling from her mouth. "No one in George, How or Item has spoke a word to me."

Mark shrugged. "Try being friendlier," he said. "Everyone in Jig, King and Love was perfectly cordial to me."

"Because you are American," Ella said, knocking him on the arm with a fist. "You're the odd man out."

Mark scoffed but put on a smile. "The odd man out," he said. "Appropriate."

"I don't know how much help we will be with mortars," Karolina said.

"I would be much better at fighting," Katya said. "Maybe they will detach me from you  _idioty_."

The six-man team from Easy walked through the gate of the field and passed by the operatives. Karolina recognized Malarkey in the group- she gave him a look from the corner of her eye. To her surprise, and to the surprise of the men around him, he gave her a curt nod. After a second of processing this acknowledgement, she nodded back.

She turned around to find them staring at her. "Maybe the hard-ass route does work after all," Mark said.

"Men are easy to scam," Katya said with a shrug.

* * *

"What the  _fuck,_ Malark?" said Skip Muck when they got to their position. He began to set up the tripod for the mortar but shot a glance towards the group in black.

Malarkey shrugged. He didn't really know why he had done that, but he had felt like it was the right thing to do. That instinct confused him. All Shütze had done in the past thirty-six hours was to insult them repeatedly, then to show them how to blow up a tree. That shouldn't make them anything less than frosty towards one another. But he felt as if he should have done it, so he nodded at her. And she had nodded back.

"When did you two become friends?" said Cobb. "Did she suck all of your dicks on your little morning rendezvous?"

"Cobb, I'm at the point where I'd pay you not to speak," said Perconte. He stopped digging for a moment and glanced over at the sour-faced man. "Or, if we're lucky, she could overhear you and put us out of our misery."

Cobb turned and spat on the ground in the operative's direction. "I ain't afraid of no Nazi broad," he said. "They clearly don't want her at HQ so they dumped her on us. I'm not gonna take her."

"Cobb, shut up," Skip said. "I don't want you to draw her over here."

Winters entered the pasture and approached the group, taking Shütze aside. After a quick word, she and the Russian gal followed him out of the pasture and down the road. Malarkey sighed and returned to Cobb's bitching.

* * *

Karolina followed Winters as they walked towards the mess hall, with Katya close behind her. He had drawn them out of the mortar range with the promise of something a little more high-action.

"Care for hand-to-hand practice?" he had said, and Katya had perked up immediately. Karolina glanced at the woman beside her. She had heard rumors in London, of course - everyone had been spreading rumors about everyone in the Expat Division - that Katya had been sentenced to the gulag because she had burst a man's eyeballs in his head with her thumbs. The only reason she got out of Siberia was because Russia was running low on soldiers and had decided to empty the prisons.

Who knew if it was true. She had certainly heard things about herself that weren't true: that she had been in love with a Jew and that's why she turned against the Reich, that she was a stepchild of a high-ranking Nazi, that she had killed a man while in the Hitler Youth and been promoted to the Abwehr as a reward. She decided to let the rumors fly. No one would believe her if she told them the truth.

The rest of the men from Dog, Easy, and Fox had gathered in another little field, a re-purposed cow pasture from the look of the grass and the men fell silent when Winters led them inside. Speirs was standing off to the side with Welsh and Lipton, who watched them curiously. Speirs sent a nasty look in her direction. Lipton didn't nod at her like Malarkey had, but there was an absence of hostility in his gaze.

"Men," Winters called out, and everyone stood at attention. "I've brought in Agents Medvedeva and Shütze today to observe and join in with our physical combat training. Agent Medvedeva," he motioned at Katya, who stepped forward from behind Karolina, "is an expert in hand-to-hand combat. And Agent Shütze is also highly skilled in physical confrontation."

"Pair up everyone," Speirs said, striding to the front. "Let's put the agents in with the men."

"Is that such a good idea, sir?" Lipton questioned. Speirs ignored him and turned towards Karolina, a dull glimmer of amusement in his eye.

"Agent Shütze," he said. He stepped into her personal space, using his height to tower above her.  _The classic male defensive postur_ e. "You seem confident. Pick a man."

"I'll fight her," said a man from the crowd. He was tall, brown-haired and surly looking. "Any day."

"Simmer down, Liebgott," Winters said, and Karolina took in a deep breath. For some reason, the idea that some of the men might be Jewish had slipped out of her head. Of course he wanted to beat her, maybe break a wrist while he was at it.

"I'll fight him," said Katya, a wicked look on her face. "He's fun." Liebgott paled a little and edged back against the hoots of his friends.

"Great, you take Liebgott," Speirs said. He was still too close to her. Karolina resisted the urge to grab his clavicle and throw him to the ground. But then she thought again.

"You," she said. "I'll fight you."

The pasture erupted in low whistles and chuckles. Winters shot the men a glare but even that couldn't tone them down. Karolina watched a smile stretch across Speirs's face, one that didn't reach his eyes.

"Excellent," he said, giving her one last look over before stepping away. "Everyone, pair up. Welsh, when I give the signal, blow the whistle. Take your opponent to the ground and hold them there."

Katya sauntered over to Liebgott, who looked like he regretted his decision to speak up in the first place. She ran a finger down his arm and he swatted her hand away. She laughed, the sound high-pitched and cold.

Speirs had given her four feet of distance between them for Karolina to work with. He shouldered off his jacket and threw it into a bush. Karolina took off her jacket and carefully folded it before tossing it to the ground. She would be lying if she said she hadn't anticipated a showdown between them, not after the way he had reacted the night before to her personal opinions, but she'd oblige anyone in a fight. She cracked her knuckles and summoned all of her frustration to the surface of her skin.

He had stripped down to his PT shirt. She scoffed and started unbuttoning her own shirt.

"What are you doing?" Welsh said.

"I am not going to get my shirt torn today," she said, drawing her arms out of the sleeves. The chill of the mid-morning raised the goosebumps on her skin. Her black PT shirt was so clean. It was a shame that it was about to be ruined.

"Ready yourselves," Welsh said, looking extremely hesitant. The rest of the men assumed their sparring positions. Speirs crouched low into a squat, his hands in claw formation. Karolina cracked her neck, rolled her shoulders, pushed her right foot to face him and her left foot parallel into the warrior position. She bent her knees slightly, prepared for him to rush her.

Welsh blew the whistle. The field around them turned into a scene of flailing arms and yells.

Speirs came at her so quickly that she almost didn't see him, but she hopped to the side and watched him go speeding past her. He turned on a foot and they began to circle each other. Karolina watched him inch closer, and then she moved.

 _Men were wrestlers_ , Philippe had told her long ago.  _They want to grapple and toss around and grunt._ Speirs watched her twirl in front of him with a confused look on his face.  _But women are dancers._ She dropped and shot out her foot to hook him behind the knee. He yelped and fell to the ground but bounced up and tackled her into the dirt. She kneed him in the groin and he rolled to the side.  _Women are fluid, like water._ She put a knee into his small intestine and pinched the area around his windpipe, restricting air flow.  _They don't need brute strength._ Speirs's hand smacked her on the ear, palm flat, throwing off her balance and bringing a ringing into her head.

The entire pasture had stopped what they were doing and were staring at the two officers rolling around in the dirt. Katya had long since put Liebgott flat on his back and had a boot heel to his windpipe. Even she was watching them tussle.

Karolina was on all fours, trying to regain her equilibrium when Speirs grabbed the back of her shirt and hauled her to her feet. She felt a gust of cool wind hit her abdomen where her shirt had come untucked from her pants. The sensation was replaced by the feeling of his bicep pressing against her throat as he put her into a choke hold.

"Yield," he said, his voice strained. She doubted whether anyone, man or woman, had ever gotten him to the ground before, and his voice was livid.

Karolina gasped out a laugh, making eye contact with Winters and Lipton, who looked horrified. "You yield," she wheezed.

His hold tightened, and tears pricked at the edges of her eyes. "I have you, it's over, now  _yield_."

"Last chance," she whispered. She felt his fingers digging into her scalp. "It doesn't have to be painful."

"Goddamn it," he said. "Just say -"

Karolina released her hand from where she was clutching at his wrist, summoned up a burst of energy, and whacked him in the groin with her fist. Speirs hollered, and she wrenched his arm from around her neck and drove her elbow into his side.

Speirs doubled over. "Holy shit!" yelled Guarnere.

Karolina twisted Speirs's arm behind him, driving his head into her side, and she tightened her free arm around his neck, choking him. He flailed a few times before she dropped him to the ground and pushed him backwards into the grass. She crouched down and put a knee on his chest, holding him there as they both wheezed.

"Finish him!" Katya called from across the field. " _Ubiystvo!"_

Karolina coughed and looked down at the red-faced man. "Do you yield now,  _du Esel_?"

Speirs's eyes went wide at the German phrase. He cocked his arm back and punched her right in the eye. Karolina felt her nose break free from her face, and the world went dark.

* * *

Someone was applying something cold to her head. In the background, she heard the distinct sound of someone being dressed down.

"I did not sanction agents to come here so you could beat the hell out of them, Speirs!"

"To be fair, sir," said another voice. Nixon? "It seems she beat the hell out of him, too."

Karolina cracked an eye open. Everything above her was a blur, but one blur was closer and darker than the others, moving around her slowly. It touched her forehead gently. "Close that eye, now."

She obeyed. The light had seared into her brain from the outside world and made her nerve endings explode on her face. She reached up a hand and patted at her jaw carefully. "Ow," she said.

The shadow snorted. "Yeah, I bet that hurts."

The yelling got louder. "If you can't keep your personal feelings to yourself from now on, then I'll demote you down so quickly you'll land on your ass and bounce."

"Yes, sir," Speirs said. He sounded enraged.

"Now get in there and apologize!"

A door creaked open, and boot steps came quickly marching in her direction. They stopped a few feet from where she was lying, and the floorboards shifted underneath the weight.

"Agent Shütze," said Speirs, in a tone of voice that indicated he wasn't apologetic at all. "I apologize for knocking you out."

Karolina opened her eyes and blinked away a bit of the fog. "I apologize for punching you in such a sensitive area." Speirs narrowed his eyes and inhaled sharply. "Which made you punch me in the nose. An understandable reaction."

He turned to go, and she held up a wobbly finger. "But," Karolina added, a ghost of a smile coming over her face. "You should have yielded."

He turned on his heel and marched to her cot, leaned over her head and stared down at her. He looked like a very angry hawk from her angle. She laughed weakly, and then stopped, surprised that she had actually laughed. She couldn't remember the last time she laughed.

He looked at her as if she had oozed slime onto the floor, then turned around and marched out the door, his shoulders tight. He let the door slam behind him, and the force of it rattled the glass of the windows.


	5. Night Moves

Chapter Five

Night Moves

 

Ron would never punch a woman in the face, it was against common decency, but that principle didn't occur to him until after he had punched Shütze in the eye and knocked her out cold.

He hadn't comprehended what he had done until Nixon came scurrying towards them out of nowhere, knelt down and rolled Shütze onto her back. Blood had poured out of the woman's nose, the side of her face a livid red where his fist had made contact. Nixon had glanced over at him and given him a dirty look. "Was that necessary?" he had said, and Ron, after brushing the dirt of his pants and noticing the entire field staring at him, realized that it had not been necessary at all.

But that still didn't make him regret that he had kicked her ass. She was asking for it. In fact, maybe it would humble her a little. God knew she needed to be put in her place. He thought about this as he followed Nixon and Katya down the road to the medical building, Katya carrying Karolina like a bride. She had refused to let any of the men touch Karolina after she had removed her boot from Liebgott's throat and spat on the ground by Speirs's feet.

And after Colonel Sink had yelled at him and threatened to take away his bars, he had walked into the room where Karolina lay and watched Roe put ice chips in a piece of cloth and hold it to her face. The right side of her cheek and eye were swollen, her nose looked broken, and Ron instantly felt ashamed. He tried not to make eye contact as he apologized.

But even she couldn't leave it at that. Though her brain was probably scrambled like an egg, she still clung on to sarcasm. She told him that he should have yielded, and then she laughed. It sounded odd and raspy, and she looked surprised by the sound coming from her mouth. Incensed, he had stalked out of the medical area and back to his billet, where he slammed the door to his bedroom behind him and had drawn a hot bath.

He watched the steam rise from the water's surface and wondered what " _du Esel_ " meant.

* * *

Malarkey sat down at lunch and listened to Luz tell the story for the fifth time.

"And then she reached under him and just  _ripped_  his balls off," Luz said, mimicking a vice grip with his hand. "And she took him down like  _that_. And then he punched her in the face, and she was out.  _Wild_."

"Yeah, we were all there," said Toye. "We saw."

Luz picked up his slice of white bread and waved it around. "Well, if you're annoyed with me, Joe, just tell me to shut up."

"Shut up," said Skip.

"Anyway, it's just so incredible, I can't stop thinking about it," Luz said. "I've never seen Speirs so mad."

Malarkey picked at his beans. He wished that he had been there to see it. He couldn't believe that it had actually happened. "Well, she pissed off everyone," said Randleman. "What did she expect?"

"Nah, she just wants us to respect her," said Bill, taking a sip of his tea. "Told us so this morning."

"No, she didn't," said Malarkey. "She said she wants to prove herself to us."

"No, that ain't it," said Martin. "She said she wants to motivate us."

"What the fuck did she do to you at the crack of dawn?" Liebgott said. He rubbed his neck and winced. "You guys are acting like the sun shines out of her ass."

"We blew up trees, dumb ass," Toye said, pushing his tray away. "You don't fuck with someone who blows shit up for fun."

* * *

Karolina stared up at the quiet man who had been so gentle. He was so calm that it was making her sleepy. She could only open her left eye, but that didn't stop her from glancing at him every now and then.

He was digging through a bag, looking for aspirin. "You're gonna bruise, probably will go green then purple then black," he said, turning around with two white pills in his hand. "Take this with some water."

She sat up and grabbed his wrist. The drowsiness fled from her body immediately. The movement startled him, and the pills clattered to floor.

"Show me the bottle they came out of," she said. He yanked his wrist out of her grasp and tossed the glass bottle into her lap.

"There," he said. She picked it up, unscrewed the lid and peered inside. Identical white pills rattled within the glass. She sniffed the lid - no unusual odor. The medic stood there, glaring at her, and she shrugged.

"You take one, and I'll take one," she said. "How about that?"

"It's just aspirin," he said, picking the pills off the floor and shoving them towards her. When she made no move to take them, he sighed and popped both of them into his mouth and swallowed. He shook two more pills out of the bottle and into her palm.

"No need to be paranoid," he said, handing her a glass of water.

She stared at him for a moment before she placed them in her mouth and swallowed, grimacing as she moved her jaw. "I have many reasons to be paranoid," she said. She held the bottle towards him and he took it from her, eyeing the bump that was growing over her right eyebrow.

"Speirs did that to you?" he asked.

"You heard him apologize," she replied. She settled back down, patting her jawline carefully.

"It didn't sound like much of an apology," the medic said. "Sounds like you riled him up."

She blinked. "What does that mean?"

"Made him angry on purpose," he replied. "Provoked him."

"Yes," she said. Karolina stared up at the cobwebs in the corner of the ceiling. "I did that."

"Why?" the man asked, sitting in the chair next to her cot. He put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward.

She raised her left eyebrow. "Don't you have things to do?"

"Nope," he said. "No one ever comes in here, except for a sprained wrist or twisted ankle."

Maybe he really did want to talk to her. Karolina sighed. "Well, I could tell he was the most angry. So, I encouraged him to fight me."

The medic blinked a few times. "Why in the hell would you ever pick out the angriest person to fight on purpose?"

"Shock tactic," she said, and he furrowed his brow, clearly confused. "No one expects a newcomer to go after the tough one. When you do, people question the order."

"This is the Army," he said. "There has to be order."

She shook her head. "Not for me," she said, smiling again. Speirs must have hit her hard. She was being so cordial.

The medic snorted and readjusted the ice on her face. "Is it helping?"

A trickle of water ran down her cheek and into her ear. "Yes. Thank you."

* * *

Nixon went back to his billet after lunch and knocked on the door to the girls' garage loft. "Ella?" he called out, and after a moment of silence, he twisted the doorknob and slipped inside.

He climbed the stairs slowly. There was a chance Ella could be in their room, waiting to pounce as he turned the corner. He stopped just before the final step and cleared his throat. "Ella?" he said, again. No response.

He stepped into the room. No one was there. He would have to be quick.

He opened one of the trunks that sat shoved against the wall under the window. There wasn't a lock on it, thank god. Inside was a black dress, neatly folded, covering up something lumpy underneath - he picked up the dress and stared in disbelief. One of the objects was a glass jar of peeled tomatoes, the other was a canister of arsenic powder, the skull and crossbones flaking from the label. He recoiled and dropped the dress back down onto the cans and slammed the trunk shut.

The other trunk was locked, of course. Karolina seemed like the person to keep all of her things under lock and key if she could. He pulled a bobby pin out of his pocket and wiggled it around inside the padlock. He scraped the pin to the left and heard a dull click and yanked the padlock off and tossed it onto the other bed.

The inside of the trunk was a mess. Loose papers were squashed under books, a tube of lipstick poked its head from underneath a black slip (which Nixon pretended not to see and moved to the side with the end of a pencil), and little glass bottles of medicine were wedged here and there between socks and extra pairs of black PT shirts.

If he picked anything up, he'd have to put it exactly back where he found it. He smiled at the disarray. No doubt that was the point of keeping everything tossed around.

One of the pieces of paper caught his eye. Peeking out from the top corner was the left wing of the  _Reichsadler_ , the eagle that symbolized the Reich. He pinched the edge of the paper and eased it out from under a book of poetry by Walt Whitman. He ran a thumb over the swastika clutched in the eagle's talons and tucked the paper into his jacket. He would have to translate it later.

One of the bottles in the trunk tipped to the side and rattled, and he picked it up, squinting at the blue and red striped label.  _Pervitin_ , it read, and he slipped that into his pocket as well.

"What are you doing?"

He stood up quickly, knocking the trunk with his boot. Ella was leaning on the door frame, her arms crossed and giving him a dangerously deceptive, not-so-innocent smile. She stepped into the room and put a hand on foot of her cot. She glanced down into Karolina's open trunk with a raised eyebrow. "It's not nice to sneak."

"We're intelligence operatives," Nixon said, and she nodded her head to the side, conceding to his point. "I'm gathering intelligence."

"Hmm," she said, giving her own trunk a kick with her toe. "Find anything you like?"

"Nope," he said, thinking of the arsenic powder. "Nothing alarming."

"Good," she said. She smiled brightly at him. "The tomatoes in England are shit."

"I bet," he said. She stood in front of him, and Nixon wondered if she would let him pass if he asked. He wagered not. "Let's go find some good Italian some night."

"What's in your pocket?"

He narrowed his eyes, and she leaned over and placed her other hand on the iron post of Karolina's bedstead. He sighed and pulled out the bottle and held it up. "Do you know what this is?"

Ella's eyes lit up as she looked at the bottle, and a scandalized look came over her face. "I've only heard of it...can I hold it?"

Nixon hesitated, but held out the bottle. Ella pinched it with her fingertips and rolled it in her fingers. "Wow," she said. "So that is the secret."

"What's Pervitin?" Nixon asked.

Ella grinned. "You mean you don't know?"

* * *

To everyone's shock, Karolina showed up to dinner that night. She walked into the mess hall followed by the medic, who had told her his name was Roe. Her face had turned a dark red, freckled with burst blood vessels, and her right eye had swollen shut.

She took her place in line behind Mark, who did a double-take when he recognized her. "Good lord," he said. "That looks nasty."

Karolina shrugged. "Hazard of the occupation," she said.

Mark guffawed and shook his head. "Maybe for you," he said. "I try not to pick a fight unless it's absolutely necessary."

"No way to win a war," Katya said. She had slipped behind Karolina when her back was turned, and she poked her in the shoulder blade. "I will not carry you again."

"I never asked you to," she said, grabbing her tray of food and walking into the hall. Nixon was already sitting with Ella, and they were deep in conversation with each other. His eyes widened when he saw her approaching, and his glanced at Ella before he moved his pack off of the bench and patted it, inviting her to sit down.

"How do you feel?" he asked. "That's gonna be one hell of a shiner."

"I feel fine," she said. Tonight's dinner was pasta with red sauce. Ella looked less than thrilled. "What are the night maneuvers?"

Nixon blinked as Katya slid in next to Ella. "You're coming on night maneuvers? After everything that happened today?"

"Why would she not?" Katya said. "No one punched her in the leg."

Nixon shut his mouth and held up his hands. "Far enough," he said. "We're doing tactical movement with light and sound discipline. One team against another. Sort of like capture the flag."

"Take the what?" Ella said, taking a bite of the noodles and making an ugly face.

"It's a game where you have to steal another team's flag without being caught," said Winters. He sat his tray down next to Karolina and gave her a smile. "Good to see you up and walking, Shütze."

"Like Medvedeva said," Karolina replied. "No one punched me in the leg."

"Wish we had more men around here with that attitude," Winters said. "Somebody jams a finger around here and they're out for the day."

"Tragedy," Ella said. She had abandoned her noodles and was devouring her roll.

""Tragic"," Katya corrected. Ella gave her a little sneer.

The men of Easy Company were filing into the mess line, and Johnny Martin walked up to Winters. "Sir, everything is prepared for tonight's drill," he said, looking over towards Karolina. She pretended not to notice him eyeballing her face.

"Thanks, Martin," Winters said. Martin hesitated for a moment, peering over the lieutenant's shoulder to get a better look at Karolina's eye. "Go get some chow before it's all gone."

Martin joined the line and whispered something to Randleman, who turned to look in Karolina's direction. They made eye contact and he quickly looked away.

"You got everyone spooked," said Nixon, nodding at the men. "They've never seen so much drama in one day."

"Surely they have seen someone punched before," she replied.

Speirs emerged from the head of the line and walked towards their table, but he stopped in his tracks when he saw Karolina sitting there. He glared at her and Karolina stared back, undaunted.

"Oh, Jesus," Nixon said. Speirs took a deep breath and resumed walking towards them, looking extremely perturbed. He stood at the end of the table and exhaled loudly, staring at the ceiling.

"What are you doing?" he said to the beams over his head. The table went silent, and it took Karolina a moment to realize that he was addressing her.

"Eating," she said, taking a bite of her noodles. "What are you doing?"

He forced his lips into a comical frown and dropped his tray down on the table without a word. He hooked a leg over the bench and shot a glare at Katya, who looked mortally offended that he had chosen to sit by her.

Nixon glanced at Winters, who shrugged. "So," he began. "Night maneuvers. Karolina, I want you on our team."

Speirs cut his eyes to Karolina. "You're going on night maneuvers?"

She chewed thoughtfully. "Why wouldn't I?"

"You can only see out of one eye," he said. He stabbed his fork into the pasta on his plate.

"Yes," she said. "And you have a slight limp. How is the knee?"

Nixon interrupted with a clap of his hands. "Night maneuvers!" he said, sending a panicked look towards Winters. "Glad we're all on the same page."

Karolina watched Speirs as he tried very hard to not look at her for the remainder of dinner.

* * *

"Listen up," said Lieutenant Meehan. "Easy and Dog will take the north side of the field and the surrounding woods." He pointed his hand to the left. "Fox and Charlie will take the south side. The first team to reach their opponent's red zone will pass, and the team that does not will fail."

Ella tossed the pot of grease to Karolina. "You don't need to do that side of your face," she said, pointing to Karolina's bum eye. "It's already turning purple."

Karolina huffed and spread the grease in a zig-zag down her cheeks. She was looking forward to this exercise. There hadn't been many opportunities to practice stealth in London, and she was afraid that she was getting too used to living in a city, where the noise overtook the sounds of her footsteps and she didn't have to care whether her neighbors heard her radio or not.

Nixon ambled up to her, his face already painted. "I'm sticking with you on this one," he said.

"Why?" she replied. "I'm sure you are good at this type of exercise."

"A little bird told me that you can walk over pine needles without making a sound," he said. "Show me how?"

She gave him an appraising look. He was trying to befriend her.  _Why?_ He was giving her compliments despite his knowledge of her past. He wanted something.  _What could he want?_ His dark eyes flickered between the trees behind her.

 _Protection? Information?_ She decided on the latter.

"I will," she said, after a moment of silence. She placed her black helmet on her head and readjusted her pack. "But keep up."

He smiled at her jovially and she followed Winters and Speirs into the forest. Speirs was doing his best to pretend as if she did not exist, but Winters glanced behind him every now and then to make sure they were keeping up.

"I wouldn't want him on my team," said a voice to her left. It was Guarnere, who was trying very hard to pretend as if he hadn't been looking at her face.

She shrugged. Speirs could do what he wished.

"Noise discipline, Guarnere," said Nixon. Bill rolled his eyes and fell back.

The red zone was to be in a creek bed, where the officers gathered the men around and established invading teams and protectors of the zone. Ella was drafted into the protecting team, and she smiled brightly. She turned to look at the forest, and then huddled up to Winters conspiratorially.

"Which tree do you want me on?" she whispered.

Winters squinted his eyes. "Excuse me?"

"We sometimes climb into the trees," Karolina said, stepping in. Everyone looked at her as if she was out of her mind. "We do reconnaissance from up high and then jump down on the enemy."

Winters wiped a hand over his brow. "Janovec," he hissed, and a man standing ten yards away turned to look at him. "How's that tree? Is it stable?"

Janovec screwed up his face into a look of utter confusion but turned and shook the tree to his right. The trunk didn't move, and he turned and gave Winters a thumbs up.

"You can take that tree," Winters said to Ella, not quite believing what he was saying. Ella turned to Karolina with her hand held out. "Claws," she whispered, and Karolina opened a flap on her pack and gave her the hand-held grips. The metal gleamed in the moonlight, and Ella quickly stuffed them under her shirt and jogged towards Janovec.

"She cannot possibly climb that tree," Speirs said, but Ella hopped up on to the trunk, straddled it with her legs, and dragged herself upwards with the claws while she shimmied up the trunk with her thighs. She found a limb that was suitably low enough to follow the action on the ground and perched on the balls of her feet.

Winters sighed. "Shütze, go with Speirs and Nixon and infiltrate Fox and Charlie's red zone." He held up a hand as Speirs gave him a withering look. "It's just a training exercise, Ron."

A few minutes of creeping through the trees - where Nixon and Speirs were stomping like elephants, to Karolina's ear - and they emerged into the brush that separated the fields from the forest. They staked out on the edge of the trees, watching the other team try to set up a base along the maze of hedgerows a quarter of a mile away. "Dicey goings," Nixon said.

Karolina chewed her bottom lip. "Wind is to the west," she said.

"Why does that matter?" Nixon said. Speirs gripped his binoculars and trained them on the other edge of the field.

"The sound of the wind on our clothes," she said, and Speirs scoffed under his breath.

Nixon looked at her. "Shütze, you should go."

"All of us are supposed to go," Speirs said.

"Then you come with me," she said, looking over at him from where she lay. "No one is stopping you."

He sighed, then pushed himself off of the ground. "I'm leading," he said.

Karolina rose up and motioned towards the nearest hedgerow. "Shadows," she whispered. He acted as if he hadn't heard her but directed them towards the shadows cast by the bushes nonetheless, leaving Nixon on the ground behind them.

They crouched in the darkness and caught their breath. She held up a finger to her lips and placed her hands flat on the ground, lowered her ear to the dirt and waited. Speirs flicked the lace of his boot impatiently.

There were a few rumbles to the right - that would be the road. She blocked the noise out of her head and focused. Footsteps to the left - she jumped up and grabbed Speirs's arm and dragged him deeper into the bushes.

He snatched his arm out of her grasp as soon as they were covered. A man walked in front of them, right where they had been crouching, oblivious to their presence. He shifted into the moonlight, and Karolina recognized Mark's profile. She smiled to herself and drew out her knife from its holder on her belt.

She turned to look at Speirs, who had already drawn his sidearm. He frowned at their twin actions and narrowed his eyes at Mark's shadow.

She held up five fingers and began to count down.  _Fünf, vier_. Her grip tightened on her knife. It was a game, but nothing was ever really a game.  _Drei, zwei._ Speirs fingers twitched on his pistol.

"I heard that she was recruited out of prison," Mark whispered to someone. Karolina froze.

"She was," said a woman.  _Katya_. "SIS got to her before Russians could."

Speirs shifted behind her. Karolina felt her hands go cold.

"Is that how she got the poison?" Mark said.

"Probably," Katya said. "She could have killed everyone."

Karolina felt her hand slide the knife back into its holder.

"But she just killed thirteen," Katya went on. "I would have done more."

She didn't dare look over at Speirs. She could hear him breathing behind her and wanted nothing more in that moment to turn around and slit his throat before he could even think about repeating what he was hearing.

Mark took a breath to say something else but was cut off by a scream in the distance. Both of them started and stared off towards the woods. There was a beat of silence, and then a few shouts echoed from the forest. Everyone stiffened, and she decided to make her move.

Karolina rose up and emerged from the bushes behind Mark, and Katya noticed her shadow and nodded at her. Mark turned around and pursed his lips and tried to look nonchalant, as if he hadn't just been gossiping about her within earshot. Speirs quickly untangled himself from the branches of the hedgerow and joined the group, a twig stuck to the back of his helmet.

"What was that?" Karolina said. Mark had turned away, avoiding her eyes, but Katya looked at her with a little smirk.  _Purposeful, then._ Karolina narrowed her eyes at the other woman.

"Let's go find out," Mark said, and with one last guilty look at Karolina, he broke out into a jog towards the woods, leaving her and Katya and Speirs behind.

Katya smiled long and slow at her before staring at Speirs. "I hope there was no accident," she said, but looked delighted at the prospect. She gave Karolina one last smirk before breaking out into a run to follow Mark.

Speirs said nothing to her as they trailed the operatives back towards the woods. Karolina didn't dare look at him, didn't dare risk the opening of a door into what he had overheard. As they got closer, she noticed that a small crowd had gathered at the edge of the forest, and Karolina pushed past the men to make her way into Easy's territory.

Ella stood up against her tree, looking utterly delighted. A man lay on the ground, his legs splayed out and wheezing pitifully. She smiled at Karolina and patted the tree trunk.

"It has been a long time since I did that," she said proudly. "But I still have it!"

Nixon nudged the man with his boot. "Hoover? You okay?"

"What the fuck," Hoover gasped out.

Ella patted Winters on the shoulder, and the man stiffened. "I made sure he would not get into the red zone," she said. "Tactical movement."

"I can see that," he replied. "I just hope he can walk."

Ella walked over to Karolina and hooked an arm around her waist. "Night moves are very fun," she said with a glint of manic energy in her eye.

Karolina detached the girl from her waist and stood back from the crowd. Hoover was on his feet again, though he was rather wobbly - Nixon and Winters went to help the man, and she found herself standing alone, her heart beating hard enough for her wrists to vibrate.

Mark and Katya's words floated through her head. Information was leaking out despite all her precautions. She had to find the source, and silence it. Karolina pulled the little blue pill from her pocket and popped it into her mouth, washed it down with water, and stalked off into the night.


	6. A Tangled Web

Chapter Six

A Tangled Web

_January 1944_

 

In the blink of an eye, a week passed, and Karolina was no longer the source of the Airborne's torment. No, that honor now rested on Katya's shoulders.

The Russian had begun to sow her seeds of chaos and discord the moment she brought Liebgott to the ground. Apparently, while she had held his face into the dirt, she had whispered exactly what she'd done to countless other Germans who had been under her heel and the ways she had used their entrails to decorate the fields of outside of Stalingrad. She chatted up a few men in George Company about the usefulness of eating cats when snowed in for the winter during a siege and told Mark what the human brain looked outside of the skull.

Karolina overheard all of this during sniper practice on Friday. Of course, she always listened to everyone's conversation if she was within earshot, but the topic of Katya's unwelcome wisdom had been the subject of horror and disgust for the past few days.

"That Russian bitch?" said Talbert. "I swear to god, she was hitting on me, and then told me how to pluck eyeballs from someone's head."

"What the actual fuck," said Luz. "Where the hell did she come from?"

"Russia," said Skinny.

"Well no shit," said Luz. "I just wonder where they get these people, you know?"

"Hey Shütze," said Guarnere. Karolina looked over her shoulder from where she was sitting with her rifle. The group of men were standing in the sun, trying to soak up the feeble heat of the winter sunshine. "Come here, I gotta ask you something."

Karolina sighed, but shoved herself to her feet. She picked up her rifle and slung it over her shoulder and ambled towards the men. The majority of them were still cold towards her, but they had stopped whispering about her being a Nazi when she was around, and Guarnere had become the friendliest of the bunch, asking her the occasional question and actually listening to her answer.

"What's up with your friend Katya?" said Luz when she reached them. Skinny's eyes flickered to hers before he turned around and faced the field.

"She's not my friend," Karolina replied.

"Do you have any friends?" said Talbert, a smarmy look on his face. Karolina held his stare until he blinked and looked away, his cheeks bright red. She shouldered her rifle and turned to go, already exhausted.

"Wait, stop," Guarnere said, blocking her way. "Tab's just salty 'cause you haven't told him he's pretty yet."

"Shut the fuck up, Guarnere," Talbert said.

"We just want to know why that Russian broad is so messed up in the head," Luz said.

Karolina ran her tongue over her teeth. "I don't think she's crazy," she said.

"Why not?"

Karolina looked up into the sky and watched a little cloud float over the sun. The dull blue color hurt her eyes, and she turned back to Bill. "I've only heard rumors. I can't confirm if they are true."

Luz slapped his thigh. "We don't give a shit, just tell us the gossip."

Karolina sent him her small smile and shrugged. "Sometimes rumors can be the best weapons." The men waited as she scratched her neck. "I think she was a partisan. She mentioned sleeping in the woods once. I have heard that she was sent to prison for bursting a man's eyeballs."

Guarnere recoiled. "What the hell?"

"Oh yeah, I heard that," said Skinny. "I also heard she broke out of prison after killing a bunch of men."

Karolina stiffened but held her disinterested expression. "Perhaps," she said. "The Russians ran out of soldiers for the front. I believe she was sent there as a replacement."

Luz seemed confused. "They sent  _women_?"

Karolina scoffed. "Am I a teacup?"

"No," Bill said. "But you're different, you were a Na- "

Luz hit him in the chest before he could finish the word, and Karolina inhaled deeply. There was a moment where none of the men said anything, especially Bill, who had gone red around the ears. "Well," she said, trying not to let any anger show on her face. "I recommend not bothering Katya." She adjusted the strap on her rifle and walked away, feeling her neck turn hot and hating herself for having such an obvious reaction.

"Nice going," she heard Luz say, and then they were bickering behind her, no doubt arguing whether or not she was technically a Nazi.

Nixon stood in the shadows next to the man that everyone called Shifty. He was shy and very polite, a welcome change of pace from the rest of the men, and she found herself relaxing when they practiced shooting together. She had even started to tell him about her previous experiences as a sniper, and he would give her advice on hunting. Their conversations made her feel as if he might actually care for what she had to say.

"What are they talking about?" Nixon said when she stopped in front of him.

Karolina stared at the jeep behind Nixon's shoulder. "I don't know."

* * *

Nixon watched Karolina and Shifty walk over to the range where they practiced shooting targets out of trees. He had heard everything the men had said, watched how she had stiffened and shut herself down before they could insult her further. His fingers sneaked into the inner pocket of his jacket and touched the edge of the paper he had stolen from her trunk.

He didn't have any way to translate it - not yet. He couldn't ask Liebgott, the man would blab to the entire company what the German words on the paper meant, and Karolina would hear, and he would wake up one night to a cold blade pressed against his throat. He couldn't send it off to Army headquarters in London - regardless of its importance, the contents were still sensitive enough that Karolina felt the need to hide the page, and if it fell into the wrong hands, who knew what would happen to her. He definitely couldn't send it to SIS headquarters - it had been purposefully left out of her dossier, whether by her hand or theirs, he had no clue. For now, he was stuck carrying around his intel on his person every day. There was no way he would chance leaving it in his room for her to find. Then she'd really kill him.

He put his hand in his pocket and felt the cold glass of the bottle of Pervitin. He couldn't believe what Ella had told him, couldn't believe that Karolina still had access to it somehow, but he wasn't going to tattle to Sink about the little blue pills, either. They all had their vices - hell, it would be downright hypocritical for him to judge someone on what they used to get by - but the nature of the drug still unsettled him. The pill itself was contraband in Allied countries, and if anyone found the vial in his possession, he'd go down with her. But still, he kept the information to himself, his curiosity getting the better of him.

Maybe he should take one. See what it did. He slapped the idea out of his head but kept the bottle in his hand.

* * *

Karolina walked into her billet that night after dinner to find Ella mending a hole in a pair of black stockings, two pins sticking out of her mouth. She looked up as Karolina shoved her pack to the ground by her bed and flopped backwards, closing her eyes and willing Ella to continue stitching and not try to start a conversation with her.

Of course, that failed. "Hard day?" Ella asked.

"No," Karolina said. "Average."

Ella hummed in agreement and continued stitching. "Hard when everyone is speaking about your business," she said in a sly tone.

Karolina rose up on her elbows and shot the girl a glare. Ella ignored her and brought the stitching up to her face. ""A Tangled web we weave"," she quoted. ""When first we practice to deceive."" She cocked an eyebrow and smiled at her stocking. "Maybe we should tell the truth?"

Karolina dropped back down onto her pillow, trying her hardest not to throw something at the girl across the room. "No one wants to hear the truth," she said.

"I do," Ella said. "Always. About everyone." She chewed her lip thoughtfully. "I know you all think my brain is soft. I was a botanist for  _Il Duce_. They fed me my experiments." She shrugged. "Now, maybe I am a little crazy. But I see better now."

Karolina rolled over on her side and really looked at the girl. Ella was still mending away, as if she hadn't admitted to being chemically addled. "And the arsenic?" Karolina asked.

Ella smiled, all teeth. "For a special someone," she said. "What about your particular bottle?"

Karolina sat up and narrowed her eyes. Ella stared back, the picture of innocence. "When did you open my trunk?"

She put down her stockings and gave Karolina an even look. "I did not have to open it to know you take something."

So, they had seen past her excuse on the train. Her right hand gripped the quilt covering the bed. She should have never been so obvious. But she had been desperate.

"How do you still get it?" Ella asked. "I thought no one made it anymore."

"We are not talking about this," Karolina said.

"I heard it makes you want to eat dirt," Ella continued.

Karolina rolled off of bed and opened her trunk with the key she kept on her dog tags. She didn't believe that Ella could have discovered the name of the drug by herself. She certainly could have seen Karolina slip one into her mouth sometime this week, but there wasn't a chance that she could have seen to bottle on her own. Her suspicions were confirmed when she opened the trunk and saw her slip bunched in the corner. She hadn't put it there.

Karolina glared at Ella. " _Who_  opened my trunk?"

Ella stuck her tongue in her cheek. "Who do you think it was?"

Karolina sat back on her heels.  _Nixon, obviously._ The only person who would have tried and gotten away with it for a few days. "What else did he take?"

"Some sort of paper," she said, picking her stocking back up. "And a bottle of your medicine."

She needed to find that dossier and get it away from Nixon as soon as possible. Karolina stood to march out the door and find the intelligence officer, but Ella stood up and blocked the exit. She shook her head at her roommate, but Ella wasn't going to budge.

"Come to the pub tonight," she said. Karolina rolled her eyes. "No! There will be dancing and drinks and all the men will be there."

Karolina took a deep breath. One of these days she was going to throw Ella out of that tiny window. " _All_ of the men?"

Ella smiled widely and held up her stocking. " _All_ of them," she said. "Nixon likes whiskey. I can buy him a few?"

Karolina folded her arms over her chest and nodded. The little Italian always had a plan, or so it seemed. "Fine, I'll go with you," she said. "When are you going?"

"An hour," Ella said. "First, I get ready, and fix this stocking." She settled back down on her bed and picked up the needle, giving Karolina's pants a look of disgust. "I hope you don't wear that," she said. "You smell like turkey. And you have dirt under your nails."

Karolina wrenched a boot off her foot and threw it at her open trunk. Ella chuckled and stitched on. Ignoring her, Karolina opened the wardrobe they shared and touched the black cotton dress that hung behind her coat and dress uniform. Nixon's blood wouldn't show up on the dark cloth. She tapped her fingers on her thigh and plotted.

* * *

Karolina listened to the sound of her heels clicking in sync with Ella's as they walked down the cobblestone street. Both of the girls had worn nearly identical black dresses, which Ella laughed at to no end - the only difference between them was that Karolina's dress had long sleeves, and Ella's had little bell-shaped short sleeves that made her look like a little princess from the fairy tales. Ella linked her arm through Karolina's as the approached the pub, nearly shivering with excitement. Karolina tried to pry the girl's arm off her own, but Ella clung on, forcing Karolina to accept the bodily contact.

"You look pretty!" she had said as they walked. Karolina had looked at her skeptically, but she had repeated herself, hoping that the next time they went out, Karolina would let her apply more makeup. Ella had wanted to pat a little pot of concealer over Karolina's bruise, which had receded from her eye and now turned the skin around her eyebrow a deep eggplant color, but Karolina had refused. To cover it up would feel as if she would be telling the entire 101st that she was ashamed of the bruise. She refused to give Speirs the satisfaction of seeing sloppily applied makeup around his handiwork.

Katya stood outside of the pub, smoking a cigarette and staring into the night sky. She turned as the sound of their heels echoed down the street. "Lovely lipstick, Shütze."

Ella had practically wrestled her to the ground to apply the red pigment on Karolina's lips. "I was forced," she replied, and Katya chuckled and threw her cigarette into the flower box by the door. She yanked on the door to the pub, and the sound of music and the shouts of men swam out into the night.

The pub was larger than it seemed from the outside and packed to the brim with soldiers and women from town who were doing their best to entertain multiple men at once. Karolina stiffened as a man knocked into her shoulder and sloshed a bit of beer onto her shoe. He turned to see who he had offended and scurried away at the look on her face. "I already hate this," she said to Ella.

"No," Ella said, drawing her to the bar. "We'll have fun!"

The bartender, an older man who looked deeply exasperated by the weekend crowd, actually smiled at them when they approached. "Evening, ladies," he said. "What'll it be?"

"Bottle of vodka, two glasses," said Katya.

"You have wine?" Ella said, and the man shook his head. "Why not?"

Karolina elbowed her in the side. "Guinness," she said. "Big glass."

The man shot them a disbelieving look but began to collect their orders, but Ella changed her mind at the last minute to order a whisky, but then couldn't decide which kind. Katya grabbed the bottle and two glasses and nodded her head towards the back corner of the pub.

"Leave her," she said to Karolina. "You will be there all night."

The Russian turned and made her way towards her destination, elbowing men in the backs until they moved for her. Some men didn't need an elbow - one look at who was coming was enough to make them jump out of the way.

Through the crowd, Karolina spied Winters's red hair, Nixon's face and Speirs smoking a cigarette in the shadow of the corner. Katya slammed down the bottle and glasses on the little round table in front of the men and pulled two chairs from an occupied table nearby. The men sitting around it gave her a dirty look, but she paid no attention and motioned at one of the chairs.

"Sit," she told Karolina. "We have things to discuss."

Nixon grinned when he saw her. "Wow," he said. "This is an ensemble I haven't seen before." She sighed and put on her gentle smile, the one she used to placate men who thought they were funny. Winters stood up and pulled out the chair for her, and Karolina nodded at him as she took a seat next to Katya, who hadn't waited for anyone to offer her the same courtesy. Speirs tapped his cigarette ash into the ashtray and gave Karolina a cursory glance. He hadn't spoken to her since night maneuvers at the beginning of the week, and his silence made her nervous. But she was used to being nervous by now.

Katya unscrewed the top off the bottle and poured generous amounts into the glasses. "We play a game," she said to Karolina.

Karolina eyed the vodka. "I don't like these kinds of games," she said.

"I do," Nixon said, leaning forward with a glint in his eye. "What are the rules?"

"You must answer the question with the truth," Katya said, a trickster smile taking over her face. "If you do not want to answer, you must finish your drink."

"Can I play?" Nixon asked.

"No," Katya said, picking up her glass of vodka. "This is just for the girls."

Ron had never seen a drinking game escalate so quickly, but then again, he'd never watched spies play a drinking game. He had tried to pretend as if he was disinterested in the presence of the women, but something about the set of Shütze's jaw and the fiery look in Medvedeva's eyes put him on edge. There was going to be another fight if the men couldn't grab the two of them in time.

Medvedeva went first. "When were you born?"

"Fifth of April 1920," said Shütze. "Where were you born?"

"Crimea," said Medvedeva. She angled in closer to Shütze. "Who are your parents?"

Shütze gritted her teeth, and with a sigh picked up her glass of vodka and knocked it back. She grimaced as she swallowed and sat the empty glass down on the table. Medvedeva picked up the bottle of vodka and filled her glass slightly fuller than it had been before.

"Is it true you were in a Siberian prison camp?" asked Shütze. Nixon glanced at Winters out of the corner of his eye.

Medvedeva ran a finger along the edge of her glass. "Yes," she said with smirk. "Is it true you were sent to prison for treason?"

Shütze stiffened and leaned back. Ron could tell she was trying hard to not let any expression show on her face, but she bit the inside of her lip. He felt his cigarette burn the edge of his thumb. "Yes," she said. Her eyes flickered towards the men. "How did you escape from the Russian front?"

Medvedeva's eyes darkened, and she reached forward and drained her glass. Men from the nearby tables had started to pay attention to the game, and Ron saw Guarnere and Lipton staring at the back of Shütze's head. The Russian wiped her lips with her hand and squinted at her opponent.

"How old were you when you were recruited into the BDM?"

Winters inhaled sharply, and Shütze's eyes turned steely. "Thirteen," she said quietly. What had Ron been doing when he was thirteen? Playing baseball with his friends after school? "Are you still loyal to Stalin's regime?"

Medvedeva's hand gripped the table. "Are you still loyal to the Nazi party?"

Shütze pushed her chair away from the group and stood up, and Winters rose as well, no doubt preparing to block both of them from scratching each other's eyes out, but Medvedeva just sat there and laughed. She laughed so hard that the surrounding tables looked over to see what was so funny, but when the men saw her, the majority turned back around. The red on Shütze's lips glistened like blood, and everything smelled of vodka.

"Well," said Nixon, breaking the silence. "That was enlightening."

With one last look at Medvedeva, Shütze strode away from the table and made a beeline for the Italian girl at the bar.

* * *

Were it not for the laws of England, and if there weren't at least sixty witnesses in the pub, Karolina would have smashed in Katya's head with that vodka bottle right there at the table. Instead, she gathered the last amount of control she possessed and headed for the bar, taking her untouched Guinness with her.

Ella had a little crowd of admirers surrounding her, the most prominent one being Perconte, who was trying to convince her to dance with him. "I will not," she was saying as Karolina reached the bar. "Unless someone else does it as well." She grabbed Karolina's hand and squeezed it. "Maybe if my friend..."

"No," Karolina said, seeking solace in her Guinness. She had to get the taste of vodka out of her mouth somehow. "I don't want to."

Bill leaned against the bar next to her. "You know, call me crazy," he said, chewing on a toothpick, "but you don't strike me as the kinda gal that  _would_  dance. But you could dance with me, if you want."

She rolled her eyes at him, which made him laugh, which made everyone in the vicinity look in their direction. She hid her smile in her Guinness. A warmth was spreading through her arms and legs. She blamed it on the vodka.

Across the room, Nixon and Winters were doing their best to ignore Katya, who was drinking from the bottle now, and Speirs was still sitting in the corner, watching everyone, especially watching her. She held his stare for a moment before she looked away. If he had any questions about the rumors Mark and Katya had shared that night, surely he had found his answers. She would have felt embarrassed, normally, but she felt flushed and careless. This was why she hated liquor.

She glanced around the pub, taking in the drunk men with their sleeves wet with spilled beer, the loud women with their hair in victory rolls and their bright dresses, and almost looked past a woman who was leaning on the far end of the bar, pretending as if she hadn't been looking at Karolina just a moment before.

That face. She had seen it before.  _Where?_ She pressed her mind to come up with the answer, flicking back and forth between all the people she had encountered in London. Karolina feigned a yawn, her heart beating double-time in her chest, her mind racing. _Nothing._ She reached out and laid a hand on Ella's forearm. The girl looked at her in surprise.

"Maybe I will dance, after all," she said in a low voice, picking up her glass of beer. She tapped twice on Ella's arm. "But, there are a lot of people here who look interested in dancing."

"What?" Perconte said.

Ella narrowed her eyes, her hand reaching down to her thigh. "Who do you think wants to dance?" she replied, her eyes scanning the room in front of her, her smile frozen on her face.

"Brown hair, green dress, left," Karolina said under her voice.

Ella nodded slowly. "I see," she said. "A friend?"

"A familiar face," Karolina replied.

"From London?"

"No," said Karolina, and Ella tensed. "I'm going to go ask Nixon to dance."

Poor Perconte looked flabbergasted as Ella grabbed his hand and dragged him onto the dance floor, where couples were swinging to an upbeat song Karolina didn't recognize. She weaved her way through the crowd, her eyes trained on Nixon, who glanced up from his whisky and made an inquisitive face - she shook her head minutely and he arranged his expression into a neutral mask.

She came to a stop at the table. "Nixon," she said. "Let's dance."

"Excuse me?" The men looked at her as if she had grown a second head.

"Let's dance,  _now_ ," she said, throwing her eyes towards the left, keeping the same smile on her face. Nixon rose up quickly and edged out from behind the table, put a hand on the small of her back and led her to the dance floor.

If Karolina had gotten strange looks by just being in the bar, most of the men were openly staring now. Some had even shot glares at Nixon for being willing to dance with the German. He placed his hand on her waist and she draped an arm over his shoulder, mimicking intimacy in a way that she hoped looked authentic. It had been such a long time since she had danced, but her hips found the beat and she focused on her target. Across the bar, Guarnere looked at her as if he were personally offended.  _So much for being the type of woman to not dance._

"What in the hell is going on?" Nixon said in her ear. He swung her around and she caught sight of the woman in the green dress - she was speaking to a man at the bar, one Karolina did not recognize.

"I recognize that woman in green at the bar," she said. Nixon twirled her to the side so that he could get a look. "Don't stare."

"I'm not," he said. "Is she someone from London?"

"No," Karolina replied, and she felt his shoulders tighten.

"What is she going to do?" he asked.

"I don't know," Karolina said. "But as soon as this song is over, walk outside the bar, and call the MP's."

They swayed together on the dance floor for a few more minutes, pretending to have the time of their lives, while Ella slowly made her way to the back door. Karolina saw the Italian pat her thigh again and wondered what she had in her stocking. Katya emerged from the ladies' room, gave the pub a laconic glance, but gradually walked towards the front door and took a seat at the last chair near the bar. Either the woman hadn't noticed, or she was more than willing to wait it out at the bar.

The song ended, and the couples slowly broke apart. Nixon removed his clammy hand from her palm and gave her shoulder a squeeze before moving back to the table to collect his jacket, and Karolina watched him go with a lovesick smile that she hoped convinced the people around her.

Both Winters and Speirs had been shooting them perplexed looks while they had danced, clearly wondering what this was about, but with a word from Nixon they both sank back into their chairs and relaxed. Karolina made her way over to the table and sat down in the chair Nixon had vacated. She hadn't brought any sort of weapon with her tonight.  _Stupid, so stupid._ She was getting careless.

"What is happening?" Speirs said in her ear.

"That woman at the bar - don't look at the same time!" Winters and Speirs whipped their heads back towards her and she narrowed her eyes. "I've seen her before. She's not a London face. Maybe in Berlin, I think."

"Berlin?" Winters said. "When was the last time you were in Berlin?"

She smiled bitterly. "1939, when I was arrested."

Winters looked at her skeptically. "And you remember a face from back then?"

She turned towards them and shut her eyes, trying to force her brain to rewind. A face,  _that_  face. Where had it been? There had been so many people in Berlin, so many casual acquaintances, all of them so cheerfully dedicated to the Reich. She thought about the downstairs offices of the Abwehr, at the secretaries she saw every morning. That wasn't it. Upstairs, in counterintelligence? There were only two other women. One was older, someone's wife, the other was a blonde, younger, around her age who ran a...

She opened her eyes to find both of the men staring at her. "I know," she said. "I know where." Winters laid a hand on the table and leaned forward. "She worked with me at counterintelligence. She used to be blonde. Her mother owned a salon. She's dyed her hair."

Speirs was staring at her, unblinking. "You worked for Nazi counterintelligence?"

She ignored the question. "She knows me," she said, and Winters eyes flicked to the bar. "She's followed me from London."

That was more frightening than any physical fight, than the idea that the woman would pounce her as soon as she walked out of the bar. After three years in London, somehow, she had been tracked to Aldbourne. But in London she hadn't been a threat. She was a stationary element, hidden behind the brick walls of MI6, translating all day long from behind a desk, but here she was exposed, out in the open for the first time in years. The Abwehr, the Reich never forgot, never forgave. Of course they would trail her. They knew what she wanted to do, what she was trying to pull off.

And she had put the entire pub in danger.

"You need to get out of here," she said. "Both of you. Now."

Winters hesitated. Speirs grabbed his jacket but stopped abruptly.

"She's moving," he said, looking towards the bar. Karolina turned around and watched the woman slip down a back hallway, no doubt realizing how many agents were in the pub and getting spooked. Ella nodded at Karolina from her position at the wall and turned and followed the woman into the darkness.

"Do you have a weapon?" she asked the men, and Speirs slid a pocketknife across the table. Karolina grabbed it and made her way across the pub, pushing people away with her elbows to get to the back door.

Ella had left it open, and from the alleyway came the sounds of fist on flesh and high-pitched screams. Karolina walked out and stepped in a puddle of blood.

Ella had the woman on the ground, but the German agent had stabbed her in the thigh, the knife lying a few yards away beside a trash bin. The woman jabbed Ella in the leg near her stab wound - Ella gasped and collapsed sideways, and tried to grab the woman's feet, but somehow the woman had grabbed the knife on the ground and spun towards Karolina.

" _Hallo, Geistermadchen_ ," said the woman. She spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground. " _Remember me?"_

 _"Enough to recognize a bad hair job,"_ said Karolina. She flipped open the pocketknife, feeling outdrawn.  _"How can I help you?"_ She tried not to look at Ella, who was slowly rising to her feet.

 _"You could run out in front of a jeep and make my job easier,"_ said the woman.  _"I hate using a knife. Blood is so hard to get out of clothes."_

With a guttural yell, Ella tackled the woman from behind and brought her down towards the ground, and for good measure bit the woman on the shoulder. The woman thrashed, but Ella held on as tightly as she could. Karolina pushed Ella aside, taking her place in the fight, and the alleyway erupted into chaos.

She and the woman had each other by the hair, and then there were other voices as Winters and Speirs ran into the alleyway. Ella was being held back by Winters, bleeding all over his pants as she tried to leap back into the action, and Speirs was trying to pry the woman's fingers from around Karolina's neck, but the woman had a death grip on her windpipe. Karolina kicked the woman in the stomach, and she flew backwards into a tower of boxes which collapsed down on all of them. Speirs went to wrestle her into submission, but the woman sent a wild fist his way, and before he could stop her hand she punched him in the eye. He yelped and grabbed his face, and the woman scrambled up and ran for the opening of the alley, but as soon as she reached the exit, Nixon turned the corner with four MP's, their guns drawn. As soon as it had started, it was over. But not quite.

The woman froze, but seemed to remember the knife she held in her hand. She looked over her shoulder at Karolina, who was lying next to Speirs's boot, and Karolina realized what the woman was about to do before she could yell out for Nixon to stop her. It was basic training for all Abwehr agents.  _Getting caught is not an option_.

The German agent plunged the knife into her stomach with a grunt and staggered back against the wall. She smiled as she slid down to the dirty ground, watched everyone in the alleyway freeze and then burst into action. The MP's swarmed her immediately, grabbed her and hoisting her between their shoulders, screaming for a medic as the woman's blood dripped onto the cobblestones under her feet.


	7. The Big Friend

Chapter Seven

The Big Friend

_February 1944_

 

Karolina felt guilty, careless, utterly incompetent, useless as an intelligence agent. What kind of operative let a foreign threat walk into their town without detection, stab their fellow operative, knock the officers of the company around, and then watched as the spy killed themselves before any information could be tortured out of them?

A useless operative, that's who. The only good thing that came from the fight was the black eye left on Speirs's face, almost identical to the one Karolina had worn. Ella, despite her stab wound and her hazy eyes, had cackled when he had walked into the light of the street lamp.

She had taken Ella to a shocked Roe, had stood over her bed and supervised as Roe stitched the girl's thigh together, and then had marched over to the foreign agent's corpse. One of the MP's had deposited the woman's body onto an empty cot towards the back of the room until Colonel Sink could make his way from Battalion HQ to give the dead woman a look-over for himself. Karolina couldn't afford to wait.

"Where's the knife?" she had said, and Nixon, who had been standing in the doorway scanning the night air for any other mysterious women, took the weapon from his coat pocket and handed it to Karolina.

Sure enough, on the hilt there was a tiny swastika, masked by grime. Karolina licked a thumb and rubbed off the dried blood. "Army issue," she said to Nixon, turning and walking back to the body. She grabbed the woman's jaw, forced it open, and peered into the mouth. "Flashlight?"

Nixon looked away from the woman's face but tossed over his pocket flashlight. Speirs stood behind Roe across the room, and Karolina caught his eye and motioned him over. He looked hesitant as he approached the corpse.

"I need you to hold open her jaw for me," she said, and he recoiled slightly. "Just for a moment. I need to make sure she was Abwehr before I alert London."

Karolina clicked the flashlight on and put it in her mouth, twisting the knife in her hand. She put the blade in the woman's mouth and tapped the back molars with its point, listening to the noise of the steel against teeth.

"What are you looking for?" Speirs asked.

"Cyanide tooth," Karolina replied.

Nixon gave her a strange look before peering down into the open mouth. "I've only heard of them, never seen anyone with one before."

"You wouldn't," she said, tapping the woman's last molar on the right. The blade clinked against the porcelain veneer and she took the flashlight out of her mouth and held it out towards Nixon. "Most people who have them eventually use them."

She angled the tip of the blade against the woman's gum and sliced downward, hitting the bone of the jaw. Nixon covered his mouth with his hand and forced down a dry-heave and Speirs stared up at the ceiling, his hand tight around the woman's jaw.

"They once gave us pills," she said, wedging the knifepoint under the molar. "L-pills, they were called, for us to take if we were caught." The side of the tooth popped out of its socket, and she grabbed it with her fingertips and gave it a twist. It came away clean, with the slightest bit of blood on the underside. She removed her hand from the woman's mouth and held the fake tooth up to the light.

"The Abwehr thought this would be better," she said, dropping the tooth into Nixon's palm. "It's hard to grab a pill when tied to a post."

He rolled the tooth around in his palm. "So, this woman was for certain an Abwehr agent?"

Karolina nodded. "The tooth proves it," she said, her tongue feeling the slick, scarred flesh inside her mouth. "I had one. OSS ripped it out."

"Show us," said Speirs. His eye was already turning green around the edges, and the lamplight made it look worse. Karolina sighed before hooking her index finger in the corner of her mouth and pulling her cheek away from her teeth.

"Wow," Nixon said, and Speirs leaned forward, his eyes zeroed in on the gap in her teeth. She smiled and unhooked her cheek. She could almost feel the pain again, the sensation of the cold pliers in her mouth, the tangy iron of the blood in her mouth.

Nixon handed the tooth back to Karolina. "Should we file some sort of report?"

"You have enough papers to deal with," she said, giving him a knowing look. He had the grace to be sheepish. "I will do it." She wiped the woman's saliva off of her hands and onto her pants before rising up and walking over to where Ella lay. The girl was under a deep wave of morphine but smiled when she saw the tooth in Karolina's hand. Ella stuck her hand in the air, palm up, and Karolina dropped the tooth onto it.

"A present," she said. "Your lucky day."

Ella brought the tooth towards her face and looked at it, entirely cross-eyed. "A tooth for a thigh," she said, and then giggled weakly before closing her eyes.

That night, alone in their billet, Karolina started as someone wiggled a thick blue file under the crack in her door.  _No punches necessary,_ said the note attached to the top, and she smiled as she kicked off her heels and got comfortable on her bed. It was time to discover just how much the Allied forces knew about her.

* * *

And now, Karolina watched Ella scratch at the bandage on her thigh that was rubbing against her OD pants. She reached down and grabbed the girl's wrist, giving her a chastising look before putting Ella's hand firmly on the butt of the rifle she was meant to be cradling.

They were on a night march, apparently an old favorite activity that the past leader Sobel had enjoyed, and though no one seemed to like it, the men were used to the exercise and did it every Wednesday night. What had taken Karolina by surprise was the way she had been asked to participate in the march.

She had been the first one to the officer's table at dinner that night, and she looked down at the dry Salisbury steak on her plate in disgust. The English could have made some gravy at least, or some mashed potatoes. She couldn't think about mashed potatoes for too long or she'd feel a pang in her stomach, hungry for something she couldn't have. Real mashed potatoes had butter and cream. She couldn't remember what butter tasted like.

A shadow fell over her plate, and she looked up to see Guarnere standing there, a serious look on his face. "Come eat with the guys and me," he said.

Karolina glanced over at the table of men, all of them cracking up over some joke, and looked back at Guarnere. He sighed.

"I mean it," he said. "The guys wanna know ya. We're all curious."

She sighed loudly and shoved herself up from the table. Bill grinned at her and picked up her tray of food and marched off towards the men, looking overjoyed. She steeled herself before she walked their way.

"They finally give you extras?" said Luz, but then he caught sight of Karolina trailing behind Bill. "Oh."

"The agent's sitting with us tonight, boys," Bill said, setting her tray down beside him. "No funny business, there's a lady present."

Karolina felt as if she were being played, knew she should turn around and just leave the mess hall, but for some reason she sat down. Ten pairs of eyes looked at her curiously, some still hostile, but most genuine, and she braced herself.

No one had really spoken to her since the night of the alleyway incident, but she had heard whispers, and Nixon was about to blow a gasket if one of the men asked him about the details of the fight one more time. It was natural that they would be curious. Maybe Guarnere was telling the truth. She picked up her fork and twirled it in her fingers.

"First time I ever ate with a German," said Luz, making a crack at the ice.

"Not the first time I've eaten with Americans," she said, trying out a small smile. The man chuckled and took a sip of his water. There was a charged silence for a few seconds, and then Toye leaned across the table. "You ever seen Hitler?" he said.

"Jesus fuckin' Christ, Joe," Guarnere said, slapping his hands down on the table. "What the fuck did we talk about, huh?"

Karolina found herself laughing quietly. Men were hopeless. "Yes," she said, surprising herself. The table froze. "I have. Only once."

"Seriously?" said Perconte.

She nodded, and suddenly she was there at the rally in Nuremberg, shouting along with the thousands of others, the strange feeling of transcending her own body pounding in her chest. "He's short," she said, taking a sip of her water, trying to regain her foothold in the present. "Well, shorter than most men."

"When?" said Randleman, and she grimaced.

"1936," she said. "I was sixteen. It was at a gathering in Nuremberg. There's a stadium there, it can almost fit a million people inside. We had to go every year, and Hitler would speak about German unity and the endlessness of the Reich."

Luz's mouth was gaping open, and Muck reached over with his spoon and pushed it shut.

"What's Germany like?" said Shifty from the far end of the table. Everyone turned to look at him, and he stared down at his hands. "My Pa fought in the Great War, he said it was beautiful."

She nodded. "It was beautiful," she said. "My city was very beautiful. Two rivers ran through it, and the lights would shine on the water. We had famous composers, too - Reinecke, Mendelsshon, though they're long gone."

"What city?" Martin asked.

"Hamburg," she said. "It's destroyed now. The RAF firebombed the entire city."

"What about your family?"

It was an innocent question, but she inhaled sharply. "I don't have..." she began, but then thought of Philippe, who was her family, but who wasn't, not anymore. "I had a brother, and I tried..."  _A boat on the river. Philippe, his military jacket unbuttoned, looking flustered. The flashlight on the shore._ "I tried, but..." She stared into her peas, seeing nothing. "I don't have a family."

Everything had gone awkward, and she picked up her fork and tried to eat. This was why she didn't share. This was why she didn't make friends. They made her remember. They made her acknowledge the past.

"Eh, nevermind, huh?" Guarnere said, knocking her shoulder with his own. "I got five siblings and they're all a pain in the ass."

"I have seven," said Luz, raising his glass. "You can have some of mine."

That made her smile, and Luz smiled back.

After that, Bill had invited her on the night march. "It's not fun or nothing," he said. "But we shoot the shit. You should come."

And she had, and Ella had decided to tag along, despite the fact that her leg hadn't completely healed. She had chatted animatedly with Guarnere, who marched on the other side of Karolina, about the best Italian food and corrected his pronunciation of Italian words.

"Stop bothering it," Karolina said for the second time, slapping Ella's hand away from her leg. "It makes it worse."

"I got stabbed in the arm once," Ella said to Guarnere, seeming delighted by the memory. "It was infected and didn't heal until three months later." Guarnere nodded politely but shot Karolina a look of distress.

"Hey, Shütze," said Malarkey, turning around to look at her. "Nixon wants you up front."

She nodded to the redhead and slipped out of line, giving Bill a shrug as she left him behind to deal with Ella. Nixon spearheaded the march with Winters and Speirs, who had recently begun to spend more time with Easy in what Karolina saw as an obvious attempt to be transferred into the company. She slipped in beside Winters and tapped Nixon on the elbow.

"One day you'll have to show me how you can wear these goddamn boots and not make a sound," he said.

"What is going on?" she said.

"Well, Dick and I had a wonderful idea," said Nixon. "Since we're invading Europe and all, and going to be fighting the German army, and since we have our own German here..." He smiled sweetly at Karolina, who did not like where this conversation was going. "Why don't you teach us some German?"

She gave him a withering look. "You have Liebgott."

"What are you saying about me?" Liebgott demanded from the behind her.

"You speak German, yes?" she called over her shoulder. The men tittered as Liebgott puffed up.

"Not to you," he said venomously. She rolled her eyes as the men hooted in response.

" _Ich spreche Deutsch_ ," said a voice to her left, and she looked over to see a man she hadn't met. He looked eager to please. Karolina indulged him.

" _Wie heißen Sie?"_

"Webster," he said with a grin. "David Webster."

" _Schön dich zu treffen_ ," she said, and he preened, clearly delighted that she had chosen to speak to him. Johnny Martin rolled his eyes.

Nixon glanced between Webster and Karolina. "It sounds so wild," he said. "What was that last thing you said?"

"" _Schön dich zu treffen_ "?" she asked, and he nodded eagerly. "It means "nice to meet you"."

" _Schön dich zu treffen_ ," Speirs said. He looked over at her, his eyes narrowed in the moonlight. "Sounds like a threat."

Karolina huffed. "English sounds like a bunch of mush running together."

"Better than a barking dog," he said.

" _Sitzpinkler_ ," muttered Liebgott. Karolina turned her face away to hide her smile.

* * *

Ron did not like Shütze. He didn't like the way she talked to people, he didn't like her attitude, he didn't like the fact that she had almost bested him in a fight, and he didn't like the way she smirked as if she knew what he was thinking. She was slowly wearing down everyone's defenses, but not him. No, he didn't trust her at all.

"But you ran into the alleyway that night," said Nixon after he shared his suspicions with the man. "And you got punched in the face fighting for her."

Ron had shrugged. "There was a Nazi agent trying to murder an ex-Nazi agent," he said. "We couldn't let that happen at our base."

"Uh huh," said Nixon, giving the man a sidelong glance. "Sure."

"What does that mean?"

Nixon was never one to shy away from Ron's black moods. "You pried the woman's fingers off of Karolina's neck," he said. "That's a bit more dedicated."

"Doesn't mean I like her," he had said, and then he simmered. He sounded like a fourteen-year-old boy.

"Well, hell, we're not getting paid to like her," Nixon had said, lighting a cigarette. "Just go easy on her a little, alright? Karolina's a tough son of a bitch, that's for sure, but it's a miracle she's still alive."

"Why?" he had asked, and Nixon pretended to debate whether or not he should reveal the source of his information before he caved in.

"Look, she's wanted dead or alive by the Reich," Nixon said. "That girl defected, was caught, sent to a Nazi prison camp where she had to  _kill_  to escape, and somehow was smuggled into England without getting caught again." He took a puff from his cigarette. "Let her live a little." Nixon had walked away then, leaving him feeling slightly ashamed.

He had left her alone for an entire month, but he kept an eye on her. There was something familiar in the way that she carried herself - she had an air of ' _Just try and fuck with me and see what happens_ ' with a square of the shoulders that announced absolute authority and control. He envied that attitude and found himself unconsciously emulating her posture. He'd be embarrassed if it hadn't worked so well with the men he commanded in Dog.

He had watched her sit with Ella, looking both supremely annoyed but also hungry for company, though she tried to disguise it. She didn't like physical touch, always pushed the girl away, but after the fight in the alleyway, something had changed. Every now and then, Shütze would put a hand on the girl's shoulder, but would never leave it there for long.

And he had watched her with the men. Though most of them still wouldn't speak to her directly, there were a group of six men who always seemed to stand near her when the company did PT or field exercises, never quite interacting with her, but watching her closely. After a few weeks, Ron realized that those men had been the ones to take her up on her madcap grenade demonstartion on her second day in Aldbourne. They clearly admired her.

He had started taking notes on all of these things until he realized he genuinely cared about what Shütze did every day, and he was so mortified by this realization that he threw his notebook into the trash bins behind the mess hall.

He jogged down the dirt road that led into the fields outside Aldbourne, his breath cloudy in the early morning chill. Running was the only way for him to get rid of the stewing dislike of the German that settled in the pit of his stomach every day, gave him a moment to himself before he was forced to deal with the incompetence of his men. His eyes focused on the mist on the horizon, just thick enough to make him feel as if he was alone in the world, no war to worry about, no people to annoy the shit out of him. That is, until he turned the corner by a farmer's brick house and saw Shütze sitting on the wooden fence of a pasture, a fistful of grass in her hand. She was dressed in a white PT shirt, one she had stolen from the airborne, and black PT shorts, her cheeks red from exertion, clearly just finished with her own early morning run.

She clicked her tongue and stared into the mist, and Ron heard the clomping of hooves before he saw a big Clydesdale amble up from the depths of the pasture with its ears turned forward with interest.

Shütze held the handful of grass towards the horse, and the Clydesdale swished his tail before stepped up carefully and nibbling at the end of the grass. Shütze reached forward and patted his nose.

" _Hallo, hübsche,"_ she cooed to the animal, and somehow the words seemed softer. " _Oh, du bist so süß, weißt du wie süß du bist_?" She said the last phrase with a sing-song lilt, and Ron's chest grew tight.

She petted on the horse before the Clydesdale grew bored and ambled off, and she stayed perched on the fence for a moment longer, sighing deeply and staring into the sunrise. It was only when she turned around to descend did she spot him standing by the wall.

"Oh," she said, caught off-guard. "Good morning."

"I didn't know you liked horses," he said.  _What?_

She gave him a perplexed look before she crossed her arms over her chest. "I run this way in the morning," she said. "I noticed him the other day. He is sweet."

Ron found himself nodding with nothing to say. "He looks big."

Shütze scoffed. "He is a big chicken." She jumped over the ditch that separated the pasture from the road and walked towards him, wiping a bead of sweat off her brow. "That's the saying, right?"

"Yeah, you're right." Ron felt like a big chicken. "Do you run out of town often?"

"Every morning," she said, looking bemused.

"And is the only thing you talk to that horse?" he said, trying to regain his bravado.

"You were following me?" she said, her temper returning. Half of her hair had fallen out of her ponytail. "Did you hit your head in that alleyway when Axis operative tried to kill me?" She gave him a hateful look before breaking into a jog and heading back towards town.

"I have better things to do than follow you around," he called after her, trying to catch up. She was fast, already had five feet of distance on him.

"Oh, yes, that's right," she said between breaths. "You need the time to write down secrets in that little notebook."

His eyes narrowed, and he finally pushed himself to run beside her. "You may have Nixon and Winters fooled, but not me."

"When are you going to realize," she said, her breath labored. "That everyone - the OSS, the Nazis, the Allies, the Axis powers - wants to kill me?" She turned and gave him a full glare, and he shrank back a little. "Even you all want me dead. Only the horses like me."

"Ella likes you," he said. "But she's an idiot."

Shütze looked at him for a moment as if he had spoken Chinese, and he watched her face change as she comprehended what he had just said. Ron had zeroed in on a freckle on her nose before she snapped him back to reality with a furious look, and before he could stop her, she reared back and pushed him into the ditch.

Ron landed on his ass in a few inches of dirty water from the previous night's rainfall, splashing mud onto his shirt and right into his boots. He lay there for a moment, stunned, before he realized that Shütze hadn't stopped jogging - in fact, she was halfway back to town. He rose up from the ditch and threw a piece of mud off of his boot in her direction, but it landed short.

"Are you serious?" he yelled at her. She didn't look back.


	8. Lucky to Die

Chapter Eight

Lucky to Die

_March 1944_

It was a rainy Sunday morning, and most of the people of Aldbourne were attending church, but Karolina watched as a handful of men meandered in and out of the mess hall, grabbing cups of coffee or a late breakfast.

Karolina had come for coffee but stayed for the solitude. Ella had a cold and was behaving as if the world was ending. The night before she had returned with two onions, chopped them into rings, and placed a few of the rings on the bottom of her feet before going to bed. The feet-and-onion smell, alongside the incessant coughing and moaning from the girl in the other bed, had driven Karolina nuts. She had left Ella with a glass of water by her bedside and went in search of peace.

Her coffee had grown cold, but she didn't mind. She was on her third read-through of  _Leaves of Grass_. She had stolen it from a public library in London after it caught her eye on the shelf with the excuse of using it to improve her English, but she had really loved the gold edges of the pages and the embossed fern fronds and leaves that decorated the cover.

_Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?_

_I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it._

Walt Whitman was the only American who made sense to her. She touched the print with her fingertip - the paper felt soft as down. The book wouldn't last through the war.

Someone sat their cup of coffee down on her table and she looked up to see Nixon grinning at the book. " _I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world_?" He sat down across from her and leaned up against the wall.

Karolina shrugged. "He's the only American I like," she said.

"Oof," Nixon said, grimacing and grabbing his chest. "Wow, that one actually hurt me."

"Toughen up," she said, but she smiled as he pretended to wheeze. "What are you doing in here?"

Nixon picked up his coffee. "I'm not the churchgoing type," he said. "I assumed you weren't, either."

She ran her fingers over the book's cover. "I was raised Catholic," she said. "I remember going to mass, but by 1933 there weren't many people who were brave enough to go to church on a Sunday morning."

"Maybe one day, if you want," he began, "if you want someone to talk to, you know, I'd like to hear the story."

"What story?"

He took a sip of his coffee. "Your life story," he said. "Hell, you're what? Twenty-four?"

"Twenty-three," she said. "April birthday."

"Twenty-three," he repeated. "I'm twenty-six, for chrissakes, and you've lived so much life already, more than I ever could if I lived to be one hundred."

"You read my file," she said. He was polite enough to fake a look of shame. "You know some of it."

"Hey, at least I gave it back to you," he said, his hand on his chest. "You have to give me that. I could have kept it."

She nodded, conceding the point. "I read it myself," she said, thinking about a new cup of coffee. "It is not thorough at all."

"OSS gave Colonel Sink that file," Nixon said, leaning forward. "How could it not be thorough?"

She smiled. "You think the OSS would give all their secrets to the Army in one folder?" she said, and Nixon knocked his head back against the wall, entirely perturbed. "You are smarter than that.

"Well, if you ever feel like sharing..." he said. "The whole reason I came down here was to give you this - it came in the mail yesterday." He reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope, cream-colored and made from expensive cardstock.

"I don't get mail," Karolina said, grabbing it from his hand. The paper felt soft and luxurious, familiar somehow, and the sensation sent off alarm bells in her head. "No one writes me. Where did this come from?"

"I don't know, London?" Nixon said, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. He inhaled deeply and stared at the envelope. "All our mail comes and goes through London."

There was no return address on the envelope's exterior - only her name, which was...

She dropped the envelope on the table and stood up, backing away from it and Nixon, who had started at the sudden movement. "Go wash your hands," she said quietly, eyeing the few men who still remained in the mess hall. "Now."

He wiped his hands on his jacket by reflex but stood up and made a beeline for the men's lavatories. Karolina picked up the envelope by the corner and held it up to her eyes. Her name was printed on the front in a German Gothic hand, the script nearly unreadable. It was the calling card of the Abwehr, the death note given to those who had betrayed the Reich. She shook it slightly - sure enough, a loose powder shifted inside the envelope. How many of these had she addressed herself, sealing with thick leather gloves, handing them off for double agents to post all over the world? She had lost count.

Nixon came back, his hands dripping as he wiped them on his pants. "Is there something lethal in there?"

"Most likely." She gave the mess hall a sidelong glance. "Where is a place I can go to open this alone?"

Nixon chewed his lip. "The officer's headquarters are down the road," he said, grabbing his cup of coffee. "I'll take you there."

They strode out into the rain, tucking their chins into their collars and hunkering against the cold wind. After dodging puddles and ducking under tree limbs, they came to a brick garage, and Nixon pushed open the main door to let her walk in first. Karolina jumped over the puddle at the threshold and landed on a grimy oriental rug that had seen better days.

A few desks had been pushed together to maximize walking room, and two filings cabinets leaned up against the wall, dusty but well-used. Nixon turned on a desk lamp and illuminated the room. A calendar from 1943, featuring a very busty blonde, hung on the otherwise decrepit wall.

"I'm going to start the stove, it's cold as hell in here," he said, but Karolina held out a hand to stop him. "What?"

"Go outside until I discover what is in this envelope," she said. "I don't want to take a chance."

Nixon sighed and set down his coffee. "I shouldn't let you do it alone, but I will." He opened the garage door and grimaced at the blustery weather. "Make it quick. But be careful."

He turned up the collar of his coat and stepped back into the rain, shutting the door behind him. Karolina pursed her lips and reached for the pocketknife she had yet to give back to Speirs. She held her breath and slit the top of the envelope open, and then peered inside.

It was ash, or some grey powder that looked like it, and it had stained the inside of the envelope, but what was curious was that there was a smaller sealed envelope inside. Karolina extracted this one with the tips of her fingers and sat down the larger one while she read the script on the front, in the same handwriting as its carrier.

 _Liebe Lina_ , said the front of the card, and she fought off the urge to throw the entire letter into the stove for Nixon to burn. There were only a few people left alive that called her Lina, at least to her face, even fewer that were German.

She ripped open the back of the smaller envelope and pulled out a card, embossed with a silver border and a tiny swastika at the top. There was only one line of text, handwritten with a fountain pen, and she dropped the card onto the desk as if she had been scalded.

 _Der Tod ist nicht das Ende._ She grabbed on to the edge of the desk.  _Death is not the end. The clink of beer steins, the smiling faces of her office workers, the drunken toasts in the backs of_ biergartens _when things felt especially difficult at work, when they were looking for a way to escape the doom they delivered to innocents, when they wished they were anywhere else in Berlin._ Death is not the end _, they'd toast each other, mocking the Abwehr motto, laughing away the guilt._

Nixon knocked on the door. "Karolina?" he said. "Is everything okay?"

She pinched the grey powder between her fingers and rubbed, watched the way it smeared onto her skin and left uneven streaks. She furrowed her brows and brought her fingers to her nose - it smelled of grease, slightly sweet, and before she could stop herself she felt bile rising up her throat.

She turned and pushed open the garage door, bouncing off Nixon who had been standing against the doorframe, and just reached the grass beside the garage before she vomited into a puddle.

There wasn't much that could come out of her body - all she had for breakfast was a little blue pill and a cup of coffee - but that didn't stop her stomach from trying to rid itself of the acid inside her. She felt a hand grip onto her shoulder, and for once she didn't try to push it away.

"Are you okay?" Nixon asked, and she nodded before dry-heaving once again, her throat burning and her eyes beginning to water. She wiped her sooty fingers on her pants and gasped for air, willing her body to calm down as she stood upright - but she felt unsteady, somewhat shaky, and when she tried to turn around, the blood rushed to her head and her vision went silver.

"Woah, slow down," said Nixon, holding onto her arm. "Give yourself a moment. Was it poisonous?"

She shook her head, trying to regain her vision. "No," she said. "No. It was a note, from someone I used to know." Nixon pushed her back into the garage, shutting the door firmly behind them. He pulled out a desk chair for her to sit in before grabbing one himself, and then gently, as if it might explode, he grabbed the card and held it under the lamp.

He stared down at the German words, his eyes flickering back and forth as he tried to translate the phrase. "What does it mean?" he said quietly.

""Death is not the end"," she said, and he looked at her inquisitively. "It's the motto of the Abwehr. We used to say as a joke..."

"As a  _joke_?"

"To make it not seem so real," she said. "We would say it sarcastically. We sent envelopes like this as warnings that we would come for them."

Nixon moved to pick up the larger envelope of ash, but she caught his hand. "Don't," she said. "It's human ash."

Nixon stood up so quickly that he banged his kneed on the side of the desk. "Someone burnt a body and sent an envelope full of its ash to you?" She nodded. "Who? I mean, the sender. But also, the body. Whose body..."

She looked at her dirty fingers. "Could be anyone in the Abwehr. My escape was high profile. They know I am here in this town, they know everything about my movements..." The thought made her itch, made her want to pack and bag and disappear into the countryside. "There is one man who hates me above everyone else. Droessler, the director of the organization. It is most likely him who sent this. The handwriting is very masculine."

"Who do you think they burned?" Nixon said, poking the envelope with a pencil.

"Perhaps someone I have known, but most people I knew in Germany are dead. Perhaps our friend at the pub. Where did her body go?"

He opened his mouth, and then shut it. "I don't know," he admitted. "Sink said it went back to London, but where, I'm not sure."

She forced a smile. "I'm not the only German operative in England," she said. "I'm just one who works for the Allies."

Nixon rose up and ambled over to the stove, piled in a few chopped logs and lit a match. "So, what's the proper response to a note like this?"

Karolina picked up the notecard. "Eventually, the people who receive these letters die." She gave him a look. "I think they are reinforcing the idea at this point."

"Sounds like it," he said. "Are you going to tell the London office?"

"I should," she said. "But what can they do? We are all at war. People die."

Nixon grabbed the larger envelope, careful not to touch the ash. "Tell me more about Droessler."

Karolina leaned back in her chair and listened to her stomach churn. "Give me access to that filing cabinet," she countered.

Nixon threw the envelope into the fire. "Absolutely not," he said. "Those are the men's files, they're classified."

"So was my file," said Karolina, one eyebrow raised. "Did that stop you?"

He stood next to the stove, stoking up the flames, and the little room was filled with a delicious heat. Nixon looked over his shoulder, saw her staring at him, and sighed. He dug deep into his jacket pocket and produced a little silver key - he tossed it on the desk, and Karolina scooped it up with a grin.

"One condition," he said as she rose up and walked over to the cabinet. "Come to the pub tonight. The men are a little spooked after an enemy agent flirted with them and then tried to kill their OSS agent out back."

"It's Sunday," she said, yanking open the first cabinet and scanning the yellow files within. "They go drinking on Sundays?"

"Not really," Nixon said. "But lately, you know, everyone's been feeling that the war is...impending." He shrugged. "They're getting their kicks while they can."

"They should," said Karolina, plucking up the folder labeled 'MEDVEDEVA, EKATERINA'. "Fine. I will come." She was actually looking forward to going to the pub, she discovered. How confusing.

* * *

"Hey!" Guarnere said, joining her at the bar where she stood waiting on a drink. "You didn't tell us you were coming out tonight."

Karolina rolled the pound coin in her hand and shrugged. "I didn't know I was coming," she said. "Nixon talked me into it."

 _Guarnere, William. Born 28 April 1923, age twenty, soon to be twenty-one. Resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA._ The files had been elucidating. She felt as if she could see clearly, as if she had been wearing dirty glasses for the last three months and had finally taken them off.

"Well, I'm sure glad you did," he said, waving down the bartender only to be ignored. "Come sit with us, why don'cha?" He jerked his head at a table in the middle of the pub, where Randleman, Liebgott, Luz and Muck were sitting, heads together in a fit of gossip and laughter.

She twisted her mouth, and he could tell that she was on the fence. "Come on, it'll be great," he said. "And no Hitler questions this time, I promise."

She shot him a withering look just as the beers came and he croaked out a laugh that sounded like a dying frog. He picked up her drink and carried it over to the round table, scooting the empty glasses out of the way.

"Make way, boys," he said. "Skip, grab another chair, won'tcha?"

"I can get my own chair," Karolina said, grabbing an empty one nearby and swinging it into a spot between Guarnere and Skip. Luz raised an eyebrow at Randleman as Karolina sat down, and she took a moment to smooth her dress over her knees.

"Well, this is a surprise," Luz said, taking a drag from his cigarette. "I remember a few months ago, this real scary broad showed up in town and called up incompetent fools - you remember that, Skip?"

"I did not say 'incompetent fools'," Karolina countered. "I have discovered that you all do some things well."

"Like what?" Randleman said.

Karolina took a sip of beer. "You can jump out of planes," she said.

"Oh," Bill said, smacking his thigh. "I forgot, we  _are_  paratroopers, aren't we?"

"Yes, we are," said Liebgott, less than thrilled.

"Ah, that explains it," said Karolina with a straight face. "I personally do not make a habit of jumping out of perfectly good airplanes."

"You ain't never jumped out of a plane?" said Guarnere.

"No."

"Well, no offense," said Randleman, chewing on the end of a cigar. "But how the hell are you gonna invade Europe?"

"I am going to swim," she said, and Luz and Muck both burst into laughter. After a moment of watching them giggle, she allowed herself a little laugh, and took a bigger sip of beer.

She passed half an hour with them, mostly listening to the men talk and offering her opinion when it was asked for, and she realized that she was enjoying herself, actually having a good time. She caught Ella's eye from across the room - the girl gave her a conspiratorial wink and Karolina frowned. It was then that she noticed Ella was sitting next to Nixon and Speirs, who was giving her a sour look. She ignored him and turned back to the conversation at hand.

"Hey, Shütze," Guarnere said, then paused. "You know what, that's such a mouthful - can we call you Karolina?"

Karolina hesitated, but Luz leaned forward. "You can call me George, if that sweetens the pot," he said with a grin.

Skip pushed the man back into his chair. "I highly doubt she'd ever want to  _call_  you at all," he said, and Randleman and Guarnere laughed as Luz pushed Skip sideways.

"But seriously, we're all on the same team, call us by our names," Guarnere continued. "If it's okay to call you by yours, that is."

"I suppose that is fine," she said, and Guarnere grinned. "I am still calling you Guarnere, though."

"You're breakin' my heart," he said, picking up his beer glass and clinking it against hers. "Cheers, Karolina."

* * *

Ella sighed happily next to Ron, staring over at Karolina and the table of men. "She is smiling," she said, looking over at Nixon, utterly pleased. "I hoped that she would have fun."

"I didn't think she'd come," Nixon said. "So I bribed her."

"With what?" said Ron, and the two of them looked at him as if they had forgotten he was there, and that irked him more than the loud laughter coming from the table across the room.

Nixon gave him a smirk he really didn't like. "Information, of course," he said.

Ella nodded. "I had to tell her how I got to France before she would let me put lipstick on her tonight," she said.

There were at least ten other local women in the room, all with identically painted red lips, but for some reason Shütze's seemed brighter. It stood out against her black dress, especially among the drab green dress uniforms of the five men that surrounded her. "It doesn't flatter her," he said, swiveling his whisky in the glass.

Ella turned around, deeply offended. "Excuse me," she said. "You insult me?"

Ron stared at her. "How am I insulting  _you_?"

"With your tone, and you don't think I did a good job?" she said, rising up and putting her hands on her hips. "Makeup is art, you insult my art!"

Nixon tried to fight his smile with a frown but ended up chuckling as he pretended to search for a cigarette. Ella grabbed her wineglass and tossed her head. " _Facciaculo_!" she spat before striding back to the bar.

Nixon was openly laughing now, giving Ron a questioning look. "Have you always been this good with women?" he asked.

Ron chewed on the inside of his lip and looked away. "These aren't regular women," he muttered.

"Oh, please," Nixon said. "Just because they can do your job and mine better than we can -"

"Shütze skulks around the countryside in the mornings, probably looking for a telephone pole she can climb to send code back to Berlin," he said. He knew it wasn't true, but he felt pettish and peeved that Shütze was having a good time, even though he didn't quite know why. "Meanwhile, her little fascist Italian friend is probably going to poison us all with a slip of the hand one day."

Nixon sucked on his teeth and looked at him for a few seconds. "You know," he said slowly. "If Karolina's starting to act normally, you know, with real human emotional responses and all - that doesn't mean she's out to get you." He raised his glass of whisky. "But it seems as if you're out to get her."

"I don't trust any of them," Ron said. "And since when do you call her 'Karolina'?" Her name felt strange coming out of his mouth.

"It's called mutually earned respect," Nixon said. "You should try it."

Ron watched as Welsh walked over to the jukebox and dropped in a few pence, tuning the music to a Glen Miller number that he vaguely recognized, and everyone in the pub visibly brightened. The change of pace was welcome, and a few of the men began to lead the locals to the dance floor, crowding the interior.

"Well," Nixon said, standing up. "This has been fun, but I'm going to ask Karolina to dance."

Ron glared at him, and Nixon laughed as he straightened his tie. "Hopeless," the man mumbled under his breath, and with a shake of his head, he headed over to where Karolina was sitting with the men. He deftly intercepted Guarnere, who looked as if he was trying to convince the girl to dance and offered his hand to Shütze. After a moment of deliberation and a few more sips of beer, she accepted Nixon's hand with an apologetic look at Guarnere. The man huffed and sat back down at the table to the jeers of his friends.

Ron watched Nixon spin Shütze on the dance floor and finished his whisky. He sat at the table and felt very much alone.  _You drove everyone away,_ said a voice in his head. He ignored it.

* * *

Karolina was tipsy. When was the last time she had been tipsy? When was the last time she had chatted casually with a table of friendly soldiers? She couldn't remember.

Nixon, despite the way he reeked of whisky and sometimes bumped them into other couples, was an excellent dancer, and with a feeling of surprise, she remembered how much she liked to dance. Well, she liked to dance when she was drunk. Was she drunk? Not quite, but she could feel herself getting there. Was that okay? It wasn't very responsible.

Nixon spun her outwards, and she extended her foot like a ballerina. He gave her a look of delight before pulling her in close and whispering in her ear.

"Secrets, secrets, secrets," she mumbled, missing his words and laughing at herself.

"You're a great dancer," he repeated, rolling his eyes at her mockery.

"It is the alcohol, not me," she said. She glanced around the bar, seeing familiar faces but only ones that belonged in Aldbourne. "Any mysterious strangers here tonight?"

"None from my view," he said. "Though I see a lot of grumpy men who wanted to dance with you."

She made a dismissive noise. "No one wants to dance with me, except for you, and only because you insisted."

He rolled his eyes. "Speirs sure was grumpy when he was talking about you," he said.

"Oh, I am sure," Karolina said. Nixon went to dip her, and she held on for dear life. " _Vorsichtig!_ " He laughed and brought her back up. "I pushed him into a ditch. He has not spoken to me since that day."

Nixon froze on the dance floor, and then erupted into hysterical laughter, and Karolina tried to look dignified but ended up laughing because he was laughing so hard, and then they were both laughing like loons in the middle of swaying couples.

She looked over at Speirs, remembering the way he had been covered with mud, and the man glared at them from behind his cigarette. She patted Nixon on the arm and pushed the man towards to bar, desperate to sit down.

"I have to stop," she said, sitting back down at the table, giving Guarnere a look of exasperation. "Nixon will kill me."

"He'll be doing us all a favor," Liebgott said, his voice full of acid.

Luz looked as if he was about to push Liebgott off of his chair, but Karolina leaned forward. She brought up his data in her head. "Is it partly because you are Austrian?"

Randleman looked at the man out of the corner of his eye as Liebgott was caught off-guard. "How the fuck did you know I was Austrian?"

"I read your file today," she said, taking a long drink from her beer. "Your parents are Austrian. Is that why you dislike me so much, apart from the way you are convinced that I am a Nazi?"

Guarnere looked back and forth between them. "What does being Austrian have to do with anything?" he said.

"Austrians do not like Germans," she said confidentially. "They have, oh...what is it called? The little brother syndrome?"

Liebgott sneered at her. "I don't like you because you're a goddamn Nazi spy."

She sighed and put an elbow on the table. Maybe he would understand better in German. " _I'm from Hamburg,"_ she said quickly, eyeing the man across the table.  _"You know what Hamburg has?"_

 _"I don't give two fucks,"_ he replied, but he looked surprised, as if he hadn't meant to answer her in German. The men around the table stared at the two of them in bewilderment.

"What the hell?" said Guarnere.

" _Hamburg had the biggest Jewish population in Germany,"_ she said.  _"My teachers, my best friends, the matron who ran the orphanage, all of them were Jewish."_

 _"And you decided to murder them all,"_ Liebgott said.  _"How convenient."_

It felt so good to speak German, even if it was to this idiot man.  _"I didn't have a choice. I had no parents. They put me in the BDM when I was thirteen. I couldn't make my own choices."_ She took a sip of her beer, ignoring Luz's perplexed look.  _"I'm making my own choices now."_

It was clear he didn't like her answer, but Liebgott seemed as if he was at a loss for words - he wasn't yet willing to humanize her, to see her as a person and not as an emblem for the regime he hated. If anything, he appeared a little less fiery, and Karolina smirked at him, thinking of a familiar fight. "Would it make you feel better if you punched me in the face? Apparently, that is the only way men can best me around here."

Guarnere laughed so hard that he upset the table and spilled the beers onto the floor.


	9. Neptune

Chapter Nine

Neptune

_April 1944_

 

Karolina picked up an apple slice and bit into it, enjoying the tartness of the not-quite-rip fruit. It was raining for the third day in a row, and the men were currently out in the field doing all sorts of rigorous exercises in the mud. Not Nixon, though - he had claimed to be behind on paperwork and had joined up in the officers' quarters with Karolina, who was decoding intercepted German radio signals as a little bit of homework. Nixon had propped his feet up on the stove and leaned back with his flask of Vat 69, the only whisky he deemed fit enough to drink. Every now and then he would look over a map of the French coastline and sigh woefully.

"All these little towns," he said. "We have to know all their names, and everything inside of them - every bridge and building and store from Calais to Caen."

She looked up from her codes. "Have you ever visited France?"

"Yeah, when I was a boy," he said. "Must have been around 1927 or so that my family went to Paris. Helluva town."

Karolina nodded and corrected a word on her translation. "I stayed in Paris for a few days before I came to England," she said. "Even when it was occupied, it was still beautiful."

Nixon leaned back. "Oh, really?" he said nonchalantly. "When was that?"

She smiled down at her paper. "You will have to try harder than that."

He waved a hand and picked up his flask. "Oh, I intend to," he said. "One of these days I'll get you to spill it all."

They were interrupted by the sound of the telephone ringing in the corner. Karolina had never seen anyone use it, let alone heard it ring - its lack of importance was highlighted by the fact that several empty paper boxes were stacked on top of it.

"Didn't even know the damn thing was live," Nixon said, reaching over to knock off the boxes, which tumbled to the floor in a wave. He picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

He hesitated for a moment before setting the receiver back down on the telephone's body. "They hung up. Must have been a wrong number."

"Hmmm," Karolina said, too busy trying to translate  _Streichholzschächtelchen_ into discernable English to care about the phone.

"Anyway, " Nixon said, moving to sit down, but before his bottom hit the seat of the chair, the phone rang again. This time he picked it up immediately. "Hello!" he demanded, and then hit his thigh with the receiver. "Alright, something is going on here - whoever it was hung up on me again."

Karolina set her pen down and motioned at the telephone. "Give that to me," she said, rubbing her eyes.

Nixon picked up the body of the rotary and set it on her desk, dropping the receiver into its cradle with a loud  _thunk_. They both stared at it for a few minutes, and then the phone rang again, shriller in the open air than it had been in the corner. Karolina picked up the receiver and held it to her ear. "Hello?"

There was a crackle of static, and then a woman's voice. "Covent Garden has flooded."

"That's a shame," Karolina said, picking up her pen. "Who will move the furniture upstairs?"

"Ghost and Sprite," said the woman's voice on the end of the line. "Noon tomorrow."

"Wonderful," said Karolina, jotting down the time, and the line went dead. She put the receiver back into its place and stood up with a smile at Nixon, who looked nonplussed.

"How could they have known there was a phone in here?" Nixon said. "Unless you told them?"

"I did," she said, picking up her papers and putting them into her pack. "I reported every telephone in the regiment after I arrived in January."

"Ah," said Nixon, shaking his head. "I shouldn't have wondered. Good news?"

"The best," she said, genuinely pleased. "London called, I am finally allowed to break out of here." She noticed his disappointed look and chucked him on the shoulder with her fist. "Only for a few days!"

He grinned. "Perfect. Bring me back a few bottles of Vat?" He shook his flask, as if he were close to running out, the liar.

* * *

Ella bounced on the balls of her feet as they disembarked at Charing Cross, her light valise in her hand, looking thrilled. She inhaled deeply. "Smell that?" she asked Karolina.

Karolina grabbed the girl by the arm and hauled her out of the swarm of women, soldiers, and old men that congested the platform. "What? The soot?"

"No," Ella said, rolling her eyes. "The smell of civilization."

They walked through the grand doors of the station and out onto the sidewalk, where people bustled to and fro as they tried to get their business done in the daylight hours, when it was still safe. Across the street an office building had been bombed, still smoldering as workers did their best to clear the rubble from the street. An acrid stench of burnt paper and wood filled the air, underscored by the deep chemical tang of gas. "Smells of war," Karolina said, pushing people out of the way until she could walk abreast with Ella down the sidewalk. They had two blocks to the nearest tube station, and Karolina wanted to minimize the amount of time they spent aboveground as much as possible.

They both fell quiet as they waited for the next train, staring at the sandbags stacked against the walls. Karolina never had to take refuge in the stations, thankfully. Her land lady had a basement where she made a bed for every girl, until one day the elderly woman couldn't descend the stairs quick enough and was killed instantly by a bomb that fell next door. After that, Karolina had moved to St. James Park to be closer to her work, and closer to the chance of getting the hell out of England and back into Europe.

Ella was suspiciously quiet on the tube, but Karolina was glad. They less they chatted, the better. The likelihood that they had been followed onto the train was high and it was better to remain silent just in case someone was listening in.

They stepped out of the train and made short work up the stairs, emerging into the melee of suited men and skirted women walking between the government buildings on Broadway. Karolina and Ella entered the security queue at 54 Broadway, showing their papers to the uniformed guard at the door. The man scowled at their foreign-sounding names but let them pass into the building without harassing them.

Inside, the Secret Intelligence Service was teeming with people going up and down the elevators, carrying wide sheaths of paper between ballrooms, and two operatives stood on the main staircase, both dressed head-to-toe in black and both very familiar to Karolina. Ella spotted them and grabbed Karolina's arm, dragging her towards the man and woman.

"Excuse me!" Ella demanded, and Claude Broussard and Liesel Neuner turned, both wearing a knowing grin. "Did you get lost? You were supposed to be in Aldbourne months ago."

Claude leaned down and kissed Ella on both cheeks. "I am a slave to the Service,  _cherie_." He gave Karolina a curious look and nodded at her from afar. " _Ça va bien?_ "

Karolina ignored him and turned to Liesel. Her blonde hair had been cut short but still shone like gold, her blue eyes the color of the ocean, a picture-perfect Aryan. " _Und wo warst du_?"

"Kent," Liesel said, stepping down and wrapping her arms around Karolina, giving her a cold but polite socialite's hug. "Spearheading the invasion, of course."

"Of course," Karolina concurred, breaking Liesel's flimsy grip on her shoulders. "But an explanation would have been nice."

"Orders," Claude said with a shrug. "Invasions are so secretive, who knew?"

Liesel checked her wristwatch. "11:40," she said. "Right on time. Let's go up."

They commandeered an elevator, pressing it shut before anyone else could get inside. Claude pressed the button for the top floor, and they ascended smoothly, no one uttering a word except for Ella, who was complaining to Claude about the food in Aldbourne.

"A mess," she said as they exited the elevator. "Beans on everything, an insult to the rest of the food!"

Claude tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. "I know,  _cherie_ , I know," he said. "In Kent they do the same. The  _flatulance_!"

Karolina looked out at the London skyline. She had missed the office, the sense of having a purpose, of being needed, of having everything in its right place where she could see it. Aldbourne had felt like an exile, despite the good-natured men like Nixon and Winters, and though she had fun torturing the other men, this was where she longed to be. Tar and H were waiting for them in the conference room when they arrived, Tar in his tartan pants and H in her usual sky-blue skirt and jacket. They both looked slightly more stressed than normal, their eyes red with fatigue.

"Find a seat," Tar said in his usual brusque manner. "We have a lot to cover."

* * *

Once upon a time in England, in the year 1942, every Axis spy active within the country's borders had been found, rounded up, and convinced to double-cross the Reich. If they refused, they spent a few hours alone in a room with Karolina, and were eventually executed if she failed to persuade them; but, if they wizened up, recognized the opportunities to be had by being in England's pocket, they were given an extraordinary task: to dupe Germany into thinking that the Allied invasion would begin in Kent and land in Calais, France.

"We already know this, of course," said H, passing around maps. "The Germans, by the will of God, are still in the dark. Thanks to the Ghost Army, they still believe that we intend to invade Calais. Operation Bodyguard has been an overwhelming success."

"What the Germans don't know is that we are doing the opposite," said Tar, pulling down a map of Normandy from the chalkboard in the room. "The Allied forces, in one massive haul, are going hell to leather for the Normandy coastline." He picked up his cane and smacked the thin beach lines. "This is called Neptune. We've sectioned the beaches into five areas: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Infantry and armored will land on the coastlines, paratroopers will drop in behind enemy lines to push the Germans off the coastline and out of the towns before the regular Joes arrive, naval craft will bring covering fire." He hit the end of the cane on the side of his brogues. "Any guesses as to what we'll be doing?"

"Going early," said Liesel, and Tar nodded.

"Precisely," he said. "Five operatives, five beachheads, five sections of German artillery and companies for you to observe, report, and disable before the landings." He gestured to the papers in front of them, and Karolina picked up her map. On it was a tiny town and the surrounding coastline of a place called Sainte-Mère-Eglise. "You will be positioned as refugees from Paris and Calais, looking for lost family members. You will each find a place to rent with the money we give you, not contacts within the towns. The chaos will mask your true identities, and the Germans will be too busy to notice a few new faces in town."

"Sir, who is the fifth operative?" asked Ella.

"Medvedeva, but she is on assignment now," Tar replied. "We will brief her later."

"What sort of timeline should we anticipate?" Karolina asked.

"Today is the seventh of April," said Tar. "We will be sending you from Great Yarmouth to Amsterdam on May 3rd. From there you will go into Paris, blending in with refugees, and then travel southwards to the Normandy region to your stationed areas."

"What is the likelihood that these plans will change?" asked Liesel.

"High," replied H. "Every move from now until June will be a gamble against the Germans' innate trust in their operatives. If there is a leak, then we will naturally regroup and consider our options."

"Understood?" asked Tar, and the operatives nodded. "Wonderful, now get out of here, we have work to do." The table of spies began to rise up, and Ella moved to the front of the room to take a closer look at the map. Karolina gathered her things and prepared to leave, but Tar caught her by the elbow.

"You, I need to talk to," he said, waving off H as he steered Karolina towards his office. "You have been kicking up quite a storm in your absence."

His office stood at the end of the hallway in full view of the other offices and giving the employees of the OSS and SIS a delicious front row seat to anyone being called in for a chewing-out. Karolina caught the eyes of women and men behind desks as she passed the rooms, all of whom were whispering to one another behind papers held aloft in front of their mouths. She jerked her elbow out of his hand and walked ahead of him, entering the mahogany-heavy office of the director of the SIS.

He shut the door behind him and gave her a weary look. "You don't make things easy, do you?" he said, collapsing into the chair behind his desk and scooting a folder towards her.

"Hard to make things easy when my boss does not tell me when a hostile enters London, looking for me," she said, flipping open the folder. The woman in the green dress stared up at her from a mugshot, looking a little more worn than when Karolina had seen her in Aldbourne.

"This type of response, though unwelcome, was educational," Tar said, lighting a cigarette. "It taught us how Germany might respond if they discover all of their spies are in our circus. If they sent one to kill you as a test, imagine how they'll react when their intelligence ring crumbles around them."

"And the ash from the death note?"

Tar exhaled a plume of smoke towards the ceiling. "Definitely hers, which means they have more sleeper agents in London than we anticipated." He motioned at the papers. "As you can see, we had her cremated and stored her remains in the city morgue. Obviously, someone broke in and took them."

"Obviously," Karolina said, flipping the folder shut. "And obviously the city has not benefitted from my absence as you planned."

"Don't be ridiculous," said Tar. "We sent you to Aldbourne to educate and align yourself with the assault teams of the airborne. I rather thought a change of scenery would be healthy for you. You do have roses in your cheeks."

"Yes, the country air is very calm and quiet," she said sardonically. "Why don't you tell me the real reason you pulled me aside."

Tar smiled behind his cigarette. "Give me your opinion on the men of the 101st."

She settled back in her chair, thinking. "They are good at what they do, and what they do is unprecedented." Tar nodded. "They're very American - friendly and rude, blunt but earnest. War is new to them, you can see it on their faces. They don't understand yet what it brings, but they are aching to fight. They are so fresh."

"Hmm," Tar said. "Do they trust you?"

Karolina lifted an eyebrow. "I would say half of them trust me. Most of Easy Company has slowly warmed to our presence. Dog does whatever their lieutenant tells them to do, they are terrified of him." She thought of Speirs tossing a drunk private into a hedgerow and smiled. "Fox is not as intense as Easy, very easy to manipulate." She caught Tar staring at her. "What?"

He narrowed his gaze. "Did you just  _smile_?"

She dropped any pleasantness from her face, and he chuckled to himself. "My, my," he said. "It seems as if we did make some friends after all."

"Not friends, people I can trust," she lied easily. "The officers of Easy, the one from Dog, and a few enlisted men from Easy."

"Good," Tar said. "Now, how would you feel about hooking up with Easy after the Normandy landings as an off-duty station?"

"I don't follow," said Karolina.

Tar shrugged. "We'd pull you for assignments here and there when you're needed, but for the most part, you would be attached to Easy as they invade Europe. They're an assault team, you're good at... assault, in general, and I think you'd be a near and dear help when it comes to dealing with the Germans."

Karolina had been wondering what would happen to the men while she was slitting throats and blowing up guns. "I suppose that is fine," she said.

"Not like you were planning to go rogue in France and find Droessler on your own, were you?" Tar said, raising an eyebrow. "We know you better than you think, Karolina."

"I believe you would have let me, eventually," she said quietly.

"We all are aware how much you are itching to get back into Europe," said Tar, pushing himself out of the chair and walking over to the wall-to-ceiling bookshelf that dominated an entire side of the office. "You're our little bulldog, darling. We need you to crack the continent like an egg." He pulled a book from the shelf and tossed it towards her, and she caught it in both hands. "Maybe not a bulldog, no. Perhaps a Doberman, or a Shepherd."

She turned the book in her hands, felt the smooth leather binding and turned the first page.  _Le Comte du Monte-Cristo_ , in French. Tar gave her a sinister smile from where he stood by the window.

"Study up, darling," he said. "The hour approaches."

* * *

Ron walked into the officer's headquarters, surprised to see Nixon studiously analyzing the details of a map of France. The man had made quite a cozy den of the place - a new rug had replaced the old dirt-encrusted rag on the floor, the stove was burning away the spring chill, and everything looked as if it had been dusted. Nixon looked up inquiringly when the man walked in and sat down behind a desk.

"Didn't expect to see you in here," he said, glancing at Nixon's maps.

"I could say the same to you," Nixon replied, underlining a town name with a red pencil. "Since we got the news of the impending invasion, we've been huddled up in here for days."

""We"?" said Ron, and when he saw Nixon's shit-eating grin, he immediately regretted asking the question.

"Karolina and me," said Nixon. "She does her translations, I memorize maps. It's quite a little study hall in here."

He didn't want to ask, but he hadn't seen her that day, or the evening before, come to think of it, and he had wondered where she was. But he knew the moment he tried to seem nonchalant, Nixon would skewer him and roast him on that fire burning in the stove. He weighed his options while he unfolded his own set of maps and cleared his throat. "Where is Karolina?"

Nixon didn't look up. "London, for a meeting," he said. "Should be getting back tonight."

"What sort of meeting?"

Nixon rose up from his hunch and blinked. "Careful there, Ron," he said. "Someone might accidentally think you care."

Ron shot him his best steely look and Nixon raised his hands. "When you make your sensitivities so obvious, who could resist?"

"I care about the invasion," Ron said, ignoring the infuriating man. "What's the likelihood that she would fill us in?"

"High, if you're nice," Nixon said, and Ron scoffed.

Nixon cracked his neck and dropped his pencil and chuckled. "You know what my father used to say to me, when I was still in prep school?"

"No," replied Ron, but that didn't deter Nixon.

"He was always a right old mean bastard, but he had his insights," Nixon continued. "Once we were driving down the country to pick up my mother from tennis, and I was telling him about this other boy at school that I couldn't stand. I mean, this kid was a fucking handful, always wanted attention and drove everyone nuts. And he looked at me and he told me, 'When often detest those in whom we see the same qualities as ourselves.' And I disregarded it, the entire thing, because I thought  _no way_  could that punk be the same as I was, he was annoying and talked to much and was always cutting up in class..."

Ron had gone hot around the ears, and he hoped it didn't show. "I don't need a lecture from you."

Nixon gave him a frank look. "You're doing yourself a disservice by not trying to  _at least_  be friendly to Karolina," he said. "I have never met two people who are so terrifyingly similar. You really should try to make nice." Nixon gathered up his maps. "It might be useful for when, you know, the Germans start shooting at us for you to have a German you can trust."

"She shoved me into a ditch," Ron complained, and then shut up. What was it about her that made him sound like a whiny teenage boy? He hated it.

"You punched her in the face!" Nixon said as he left the room. "Food for thought."

* * *

It was night by the time Karolina and Ella arrived in Aldbourne from London, and Ella had fallen asleep on the train, her head nodding downward every now and then and startling her awake. Karolina had sent her up to their room with the copy of  _Monte-Cristo_ and headed out into the night. She had to find Nixon.

Somewhere outside of London, as the train bopped over loose rails and past bombed-out fields, she had decided to tell the intelligence officer what had transpired at the OSS that afternoon. It didn't seem very fair for the men to find out last, when they were the ones who risked being blown to bits in the sky for the cause. The least she could do would be to tell Nixon, who could figure out a plan beforehand, a plan that might make Easy Company safer after they dropped. The night air whisked around her and stirred her hair loose from the pins that kept it in place. She touched the nap of her neck and frowned - it was getting too long, she'd have to have a haircut before she left for Amsterdam.

_Amsterdam._ The idea thrilled her and made her feet sweat. The last time she had been in the Netherlands, she had been hiding out in the red-light district, pretending to be a whore as the Nazis combed France and Holland for any sign of her presence. She saw light shining from underneath the garage door of the officers' headquarters, and she picked up her pace, eager to get closer to that little stove.

"Nixon," she said, pushing open the door. "I'm back, I have so much..." Her voice died away as she shut the door behind her and realized that the man standing next to the stove was not Nixon, but Speirs. He looked exhausted, but his eyes were bright and she could tell his brain was speeding ahead. They stared at each other for a moment before Karolina looked away.

"Have you seen -"

"How was Lon -"

They spoke at the same time, and they both fell quiet, and Karolina felt ridiculously awkward just standing there as he stared at her as if he had never seen her before in his life. "I was going to ask, have you seen Nixon?" she said.

"He stepped out," Speirs said. He pulled out a chair and sat next to the stove, opening the little door and throwing scrap paper into the flames. "With a lady from town."

"Oh," Karolina said. She didn't quite know what to do with herself - Speirs didn't seem as if he was going to pick another fight, at least not right then - so Karolina dropped her satchel on the desk she had claimed and began to take her papers out. "He chose a bad time to do it."

"Why?" said Speirs, and when she looked up, there wasn't a bit of hostility in his face. It was puzzlingly... blank, as if he had wiped any emotional affect away on purpose. She supposed that he had, and on second consideration, she thought, he didn't look like such an asshole when he was being normal.

She sat down and arranged her translations under her maps. "Well, it was a busy day," she said. "I had much to tell him."

"Is it about the drop on France?" he asked, and she looked up and scanned his rabidly curious face. He could smell blood a mile away, like a shark. "Care to share?"

"I would," she said. "But who knows if I can be trusted? I am just a Nazi spy, after all."

She watched him carefully as he sighed and scowled. Men never liked it when you threw their mistakes in their face - that was why she did it all the time. Speirs needed to grovel a little more before she would throw him a bone.

"Look," he said, the word hard and resentful. "I know that we don't get along -"

"No, no," she said quietly. " _You_  do not get along with  _me_. I personally have nothing against your nationality, even though Americans are generally  _Idioten_."

He glared openly. "Fine," he said. "I don't get along with you, at all. But Nixon thinks that we should be civil." He rolled his eyes to the side. "So, let's try to be civil."

She raised her eyebrows. "I was always civil," she said. "But someone could not understand how he could be beat by a woman, so..."

He stood up. "Goddamn it," he fumed. " _Someone_  had the attitude of a stuck-up, arrogant ass -"

She smoothed out her map under her hands, the fine lines blurring together and her eyes aching from squinting at the fine print all afternoon. "Come take a look at this," she said. "This is where everyone will be dropping."

He shoved his hands into his pockets, giving her a hard look. She sighed and glanced up at him. "I forgive you," she said. "Now, would you please help me? I am trying to offer you peace. I am very overwhelmed."

And as she said it, she finally let the day sink in, faced the fact that she would be launched from her comfortable bed and three meals a day into the mud and gore and misery of Europe where she had longed to go to for so long, and the idea of taking out an entire company of German artillery was beginning to look very daunting. She had gotten used to Nixon and Winters helping her with the most menial activities, with Ella helping out with the laundry and the cleaning, the support system of the fellow operatives, the backup of the Easy men she had befriended.  _Befriended._ She shook her head minutely. She had grown soft, after all. And Europe was going to kick her teeth out.

But all of a sudden Speirs was there, measuring mileage with his compass and drawing lines towards roads that connected Sainte-Mere-Eglise to the beachfronts and wondering aloud which beach Easy would drop behind and if Fox was going there, too, and even though he still looked peeved from their discussion, every now and then he looked at her as if she were a person. Not an entity. He stood behind her chair and pointed out the towns he already knew, which he had learned from a map that he had stolen from Nixon, and that most of the roads were dirt and that the bridges would no doubt be bombed by the Germans, and what was her role in all this?

She couldn't tell him, so she left him there, still studying the maps she left behind with his promise to lock them in the filing cabinet, and she found herself looking at him as if he were a person, too, and not some loud, braying jackass who needed to be pushed into a ditch once in a while to quell the ego. He would get pushed into plenty of ditches in Europe. She fell asleep that night and dreamt of Tar and Speirs loading their guns with mud and firing it at each other, every shot pushing them over the cliffs of France and into the ocean below.


	10. Auf Wiedersehen

Chapter Ten

Auf Wiedersehen

_Aldbourne, England; De Panne, Belgium_

_1-4 May 1944_

 

Karolina stopped to tie her boots outside of her billet, and for the first time that she had been in Aldbourne, appreciated the quiet outside. The sun had barely risen above the horizon, and the chilly mists hovering over the fields had become a delicious treat instead of a pain as the weather had turned warmer. Bright flowers had bloomed in her host family's garden - purple irises and daffodils had sprouted up overnight as if by magic, and Queen Anne's lace filled the sides of the roads and sprinkled through the pastures. She tried to remember what flowers had grown in German springs but couldn't think of a single one. She remembered making flower crowns and garlands for May Day in the BDM, wrapping the silly little maypole outside of their camp dorm with the boys of the Youth, eating cake and tea and dancing. She had never really liked the traditional music the matrons insisted on playing. She had wanted to dance to swing, but it was forbidden, and every record that had existed after the rise of Hitler had been found and smashed.

She thought about this as she ran down the street and out of the village, passing the old men as they went out to feed their cows and horses, enjoying the crisp air on her skin. She felt more alive in the mornings, more human, but she never could figure out why. She never had the opportunity to run like this in London - once, an off-duty British soldier had tried to throw his beer on her, told her women don't run, and she had broken his hand. In Berlin, she went out every morning with a squad of Abwehr girls and the people on the street had looked at her with pride, entirely impressed with their new breed of strong young women.

_Values,_ Karolina thought with a smirk. How curious. One valued the strong and murdered the weak, the other valued the weak and sent the strong to defend them.

She would have posited this imbalance all day long if it hadn't been for the sound of another pair of boots hitting the ground behind her. Her train of thought was broken, and she looked over her shoulder to see Speirs close behind, catching up with her. The man nodded at her cordially and didn't say a word, just kept pace with her as they both ran into the rural outskirts of the town.

They seemed to have reached an accord with one another, or at least Karolina thought so. She had a hunch of what was going on in Speirs' head, but wasn't entirely sure. It was clear that he had finally accepted her presence in their midst and seemed to have decided that she was valuable to him for information. It had only taken him four months to come to that conclusion, but in a way, Karolina respected him for that. She understood the suspicion - all the men had was Nixon's confidence and her word that she wasn't a sleeper agent. She wouldn't have believed her, not in a hundred years, and Speirs had done well, enough to flush out a bad agent had she been one in the first place.

She hadn't said any of this to Speirs, though. She didn't think it was necessary and had known from the time he had punched her in the face that, curiously, their brains operated on the same wavelength. She was delighted that he had decided to tune in with her's - at the very last minute possible, she observed wryly.

"Good morning," she said, after another mile of silence. Speirs made a noncommittal noise in his throat and she laughed and wiped the sweat from her eyes. "What do you want?"

He ran in silence for a moment, shaking his head, before he finally came clean. "Can you teach me how to use Enigma?"

She looked at him in surprise. "Oh,  _ja_ , sure," she said. "Why?"

"If we need to communicate with you, without Longshore, we need to know how," he said. "And we're going to need to update you if anything changes, before the word trickles down to you from some other source. It's practical."

Mark was being left behind, in charge of receiving all the operatives' Enigma messages and translating them for the officers in Upottery, where the men would be moving next week to prepare for the Invasion. He was absolutely livid about it and had let everyone know as they had tuned up their machines to the receptor machine. He had begun to make a disparaging remark about women, but Ella had accidentally dropped her machine on his foot. On accident, of course.

"It is practical," she said. "I cannot wait. 'Dear Karo Lina Toda Ywea Temo Rebe Ansa Ndwe Miss Youx Oxo...'"

She laughed at her own joke and Speirs squinted at her, not comprehending her syntax. She shook her head. "You will understand. I need to get my machine, and maybe we can wake up Nixon and we will go to battalion headquarters after the run, okay?"

Thirty minutes later, she ran up the stairs of her billet and found Ella blinking awake in her bed. " _Qu'est-ce que tu fais?_ " said the girl, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes as Karolina buckled her Enigma machine into its portable box. Karolina grabbed one of the little blue pills on her bedside table and popped it into her mouth, swallowing it with a bit of last night's water on the nightstand.

"Teaching the officers how to send and decipher Enigma," she said, catching a whiff of her underarm and grimacing. "Good French."

"Practicing," groaned Ella, flopping face down on her pillow and falling back asleep. She envied the girl for that - Karolina was such a light sleeper that the slightest change in birdsong woke her up.

She shut the door behind her and met Speirs by the fence. The man had lit a cigarette and offered her one, but she waved it away. "Did you wake up Nixon?"

"I tried," he said. "Threw some water on him. He said he would meet us shortly."

They stood there kicking at the gravel, waiting on Nixon to come down, not speaking, just watching the sun come up over the trees. A breeze hit the back of Karolina's neck and she shivered. "I will miss the silence," she said aloud, and then wondered why she had said it at all.  _Because it was true?_

Speirs stared off into the field across the street. "What does..." he began, but then cut himself off. "Nevermind."

"No, what were you going to say?" she inquired, genuinely curious. He seemed less defensive today, and she was intrigued.

He wiped his hands on his shirt, looking embarrassed. "Hell," he said. "I was going to ask, 'What does war sound like?'. Stupid."

She shrugged. "Loud. Never silent like this. And no birds." As if to make her point, a mockingbird called out from within the woods. "No wild animals. When you find a moment of peace, you enjoy it."

He nodded, and they grew quiet again, and Karolina thought about cleaning her sniper rifle before she disassembled it and threw it into a gunny sack in two days' time.

"Well, what a happy little gathering," said Nixon, closing the door of the house behind him. His eyes were heavy with sleep, and he checked his watch. "Seven in the morning, on a Saturday," he grumbled. "Excellent, fantastic. What are we doing?"

"Learning Enigma," said Karolina, and he perked up immediately, though his eyes were still heavy from sleep. She patted the box slung over her shoulder. "You have to send me little love notes. Keep me on my toes."

Nixon laughed and slung an arm around her shoulder, something he had started doing once she had returned from London and consequentially told him she was leaving. She still didn't like it, but knew that he meant well, so she resisted the urge to shove him off - but as soon as he realized how sweaty she was, he pushed her away with a fake retching noise.

* * *

"So," Karolina said, after she had broken into Mark's office at battalion headquarters and locked them inside. "It is actually fairly simple to use, but was hard to translate, until the British cracked it with Ultra."

She opened the box and turned on the receiver machine, listening to the familiar noise of the cranks and whines of both machines. Nixon glanced at the door, and she read his mind. "It is very loud."

"You don't say," said Speirs.

She pointed at her machine, nestled in its box. "You type your message on the keys, then press send." She turned on her machine and listened to the clicks as it connected with the receiver machine. "You must type them all in four-lettered sequences and remember what you are saying as you type - there is no paper to tell you what you have typed." She gestured at the receiver, which was humming quietly. "When the transmission has sent, the machine will have picked up the signal and will translate whatever you send into English."

Speirs' eyes were glittering as he circled around the receiver machine. "Show us," he said.

Karolina cracked her knuckles and began to type, hitting send after each four-lettered sequence. The men stared at her hands flying across the keyboard, and then jumped as the receiver hummed to life. The dials on the face of the machine turned as twenty-four circles wiggled rhythmically, churning out letters on a feed of tape, grinding the gears together in a great chopping wave. Speirs picked up the feed as it came out of the machine.

"Cove Ntga Rden Hasf Lood Ed," he read. "Will the transmissions always be coded?"

"For my safety, yes," Karolina. "I cannot say 'Having good time sabotaging Germans', can I?"

Nixon crouched down by the Enigma machine, tracing the swastika outlined on the top of it. "Took a little something with you when you left, huh?"

Karolina smiled. "I don't know if you have heard," she said. "But I used to be a German spy." She gave Speirs a pointed look, and he hid behind his neutral mask. "It is a huge secret, don't tell."

Nixon snorted. "Well, if you've learned anything from us, it's sarcasm."

She turned to give him a biting response, but a shadow emerged in the hallway behind the frosted glass of the door, and Karolina stood up, unsheathing a knife she had hidden in her PT shorts. Nixon started to his feet beside her, and Speirs crept to the side of the door, picking up the empty wastebasket and raising it over his head to bash the shit out of whoever came through the door.

Mark burst into the room, a pistol in his hand, but he lowered it when he saw Karolina's smug face. "Are you kidding me?" he said, exasperated, shoving the pistol back into his jacket pocket. "It's eight in the morning, on a Saturday!"

"Sorry to disappoint you," said Karolina, putting the knife away. Speirs dropped the wastebasket on the floor with a hollow, metal thud, and Mark jumped and shot him a glare.

* * *

That night, she told the men that she was leaving. It did not go over well.

Karolina had walked into the mess hall and had eaten dinner with them as she normally did, listened to their banter and their foolishness, and had told them to wait around until the other men had left the dining hall for an announcement. They were starting to get tired of announcements, but they humored her. They knew that whatever she had to say was usually good.

She stood in front of them, and suddenly everyone's chatter dropped to a hush as they noticed the look on her face. "Well, gentlemen," she said, clasping her hands behind her. "I am afraid to say that our time here, together, is drawing to a close."

Guarnere squinted his eyes. "Whaddya mean?"

"I am being sent elsewhere to aid the Invasion," she said, and they just stared. "To France."

"What?" Johnny Martin hollered, getting to his feet. "How?"

She cocked her head. "What do you mean, 'how'?"

"Well, it's not like you can fly over there, and you sure as hell can't jump out of a plane," said Randleman, looking annoyed.

"I cannot exactly tell you how," she said. "But use your imagination - I cannot walk on water."

Luz scoffed. "So, they're gonna pack you up in a little boat and kick you towards France? That sounds like a great plan."

Karolina wiped a hand over her face, trying to ignore the grumbles of the men. "Look, I am going over there to help aid the landings, and to make sure you all take the coastline," she said. "And then, after you all get there, I will meet you and we will go conquer Europe."

"That sounds fun," said Toye. "And dangerous."

"But you'll be alone in a town you don't know," said Lipton, concerned. "That doesn't sound very safe."

She could have laughed at the absurdity of their situation and worrying about  _safety_ , and she wanted to, but she didn't want to insult him. Instead, she patted his shoulder and gave him a sad little smile. "And you will be jumping out of an airplane in oncoming enemy fire, floating to the ground behind enemy lines and regrouping in the night," she said. "That doesn't sound very safe either."

"How are you going to find us?" asked Shifty.

"I'm stationed near the beach," she said. "I'll find you."

Everyone sat back and let that digest for a moment, and she could see the men were not pleased. Winters raised an eyebrow at her from the back, and she shrugged. It was better to be honest, and she owed them more than disappearing into the night without saying goodbye.

"When do you leave?" asked Liebgott, and she stared at him, shocked at the look of sincerity on his face. Guarnere seemed surprised as well, and exchanged a glance with Malarkey, who shook his head.

"On the third, at night," she said.

Welsh looked hurt. "You waited until the last minute to tell us?"

"For her own safety," Nixon said, stepping in. "And ours. I trust none of you will share any of this to people outside of the airborne?"

"We're not idiots," said Guarnere under his breath.

Nixon rolled his eyes. "Yeah," he said, without a single voted of confidence in his tone.

"This is not for forever," Karolina said, feeling the mood in the room shift from disbelief to begrudging sadness. "I will see you on the other side."

_Not all of them, though. Not all of them._ She closed her eyes. It was time to greet death again, her old friend. But first, she was swept up into a hug by Guarnere, who held her a little too tight for her comfort, but she patted his shoulder and wondered when she had allowed these men to get so close to her.

* * *

Ella had cried, of course. She had wept when she packed her trunk, wept when she kissed their hosts goodbye - who had looked appalled at the contact - and wept when they jumped into the jeep that would take them to the train station.

Now, she was weeping on the platform, standing beside Karolina as they waited for the train that would carry them into London and on to Great Yarmouth.

The day had been taxing, even on Karolina, who had packaged her emotions into a neat little bundle and placed them somewhere deep down in her chest, alongside the fear that was bubbling up from the bottom of her stomach like tar. She had spent most of the day with the men and the officers, tying up loose ends with paper work and sharing her future coordinates with Mark. Guarnere had taught her how to play poker, or had tried, and had laughed at her as she lost her money but had given her losses back at the end of the game. Nixon insisted on her filling him in on every detail of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, so that when the time came he'd be able to find her in the melee of war. Shifty had taken apart her sniper's rifle and cleaned it for her, and she fixed his broken scope in return. Roe had even packed a little medical kit for her to take with her, and she found herself touched by all these sweet, strange gestures of friendship.

But Speirs had been the strangest of all.

He had found her as she was organizing her papers in the officers' headquarters, and he had walked in and shut the door behind him. He looked disheveled and out of breath, but he walked up to her and extended his hand. She had looked at it for a moment before realizing that he was offering a handshake, and she took it.

He pumped his arm a few times, and then ran a hand over his messy hair. "Well," he said, and then he stopped. She looked at him curiously. It appeared as if he wanted to say something else, but couldn't get his mouth to work, so she cut in.

"I have to say that I always thought you were the most competent person here," she said. "It has been exciting with all of you. I hope you survive."

She thought she saw him blush, but decided it was a trick of the light. He pursed his lips, then gave her a little grin. "I hope you survive, too," he said, ducking his head and digging around in his pack. "Here. I found this. Take it."

He dropped a silver-handled dagger on the desk between them, and Karolina picked it up, admiring the filigree on the handle. She pulled off the metal sheath and held the blade up to the light, watching the way the steel glinted, and then she threw it past him and into the wall, where it embedded with a solid thunk.

He jumped to the side, but the knife had already implanted itself into the wood, a good three inches deep. She grinned, and then laughed at his pained expression.

"Sorry," she said. "I should have warned you. It was impulse." She walked past him and wrenched it out of the wall, pleased to not see a single scratch on the blade. "It is a good present. Thank you."

He flushed, and she was delighted with his response and with him, for the moment. "It wasn't a present, I happened to see it and thought you might -"

"Here," she said, reaching to her side, pulling off her old knife. "Have this one, it has served me well." She held it out to him, and when he didn't reach to take it, she sighed. "It is not polite to take a gift without giving a gift."

He had taken her knife and given her a look, one that she was still trying to decipher. Karolina knew that most everyone on the base was intimidated by Speirs, except for her, and she had rubbed it in his face for the past four months, nearly non-stop in her biting comments and blatant disregard for his anger. It was because she saw a bit of herself in him, and hated it - she was supposed to be the one people were afraid of, and yet she had this stubborn ass of a man battling her at every turn, and nothing could ever be easy, could it?

But the way he had looked at her in the office, she had no basis of comparison for that. His expression was cold, but his eyes were warm and intense. She had waited for him to say something, and when he didn't she nodded and scooped up all her files, making sure they wouldn't slip as she walked. "Well," she said. "I will see you in France." And he had held the door open for her, and she had walked back to her billet with the most peculiar feeling in her stomach. She had resisted the urge to look back, but now she wished that she had. It could have been the last time she would ever see the man. That made her chest tight, for some reason.

Ella sniffled beside her, and she was brought back to the present. Katya rolled her eyes beside the girl. "Stop doing that," she barked, and Ella gave her a strong side eye.

"Stop doing what?" she said. "Mourning my dead friends?"

"They're not dead yet," said Karolina.

"They will be!" Ella said, in total despair. A whistle sounded in the distance, and Karolina watched the train's headlight turn the corner and burn their way. "I just know that most of them will die."

"Let us focus less on that, okay?" said Katya, giving the girl's back a firm pat that looked as if it were meant to be comforting. "Let us focus on surviving ourselves."

"She is right," Karolina said to Ella. "This next month is going to be hell."

"War is hell," said Katya as the train slowed to a stop in front of them. "Hell is boring in comparison. I know, I have been."

* * *

Of course, it all went awry at the start. Nothing ever went to plan.

They had been in the Netherlander's boat, bopping forward on the angry waves of the Channel, when the captain of the vessel had scurried down into the hull and looked at them with frightened eyes.

"We cannot go to Amsterdam," he said, in broken French. "Gestapo at the port. We will go south to De Panne."

"De Panne, in Belgium?" Claude had said, utterly livid. "Near Dunkirk?"

"I am sorry, it is only safe port," the captain had said, and he hastened away from the five angry operatives stowed away in his hull.

They had been on the boat for two hours, all of them cramped and uncomfortable and nervous about torpedoes and drowning. Katya laughed in a cold, high-pitched way. "We are all dead," she said.

"Shall we waltz right into Calais, then?" Liesel said, dumbfounded. "We might as well."

"We might as well  _sail_  into Calais," said Katya.

When they disembarked in De Panne, having donned their civilian clothes and carrying their suitcases in hand, they had found a deadly silent city. Absolutely no one was in the street, not even the night guards of the German army. They had met an old man sitting outside of a half-empty pub, smoking a cigarette and eyeing them carefully.

"Excuse me, sir," said Liesel, putting on the charm. "Where is everyone?"

The old men cocked one eyebrow and extinguished his smoke. "Haven't you heard?" he said in French. "They've all gone to Calais."

"Calais?" said Karolina, and the man nodded.

"Yes, indeed," he said. "Not sure where you've just come from, but there's going to be an invasion, my love. People are going to the Germans for protection."

"Are there any lines running to Paris?" asked Ella.

The man looked at her quizzically. "The trains stopped a few months ago," he said. "You'll have to walk there." He stood and ambled over to a truck that was parked alongside the street. " _Bonne chance_."

"Wait a minute, sir, if you please," said Claude, intercepting the man. "Is that your truck?"

The man squinted his eye at the dark Frenchman. "Yes, why?"

"Would you be willing to part with it?" Claude asked politely. The man looked taken aback. "Or, if you're not, I'm sure we could pay you a reasonable fee to get us to Normandy. We're all looking for family, you see. We think they went south to the coast."

Ten minutes later, a thousand francs poorer, and slightly more cheerful, the five of them piled into the truck and headed towards France.

"It's simple," said Karolina, pulling out a map up front with Claude. "We are going to go past Dunkirk, then go straight down through Longuenesse and through Abbeville, pass a place called Nuefchatel-en-Bray, and then wind our may into Normandy." She traced the line down the coast. "We will drop off people at their stations as we pass them."

"We already skipped Amsterdam," Ella said from the back of the truck. "I'm sure it will be fine that we skip Paris." She considered that for a moment. "Was there anything we needed in Paris?"

"No," said Liesel. "It was simply a cloaking measure. But from the way everything looks, no one cares about us. I think people think it's the end of the world."

The sun was beginning to peek over the treetops, and Karolina shut her eyes as they bumped past deserted cars and broken-down wagons.

* * *

Ron couldn't sleep. He kept thinking about that silver knife, that stupid silver knife.

He had wanted to give her something.  _Why?_ Because he felt as if he had needed to apologize to her, to do it more, so he had worked himself into a frenzy thinking of what she might need in France. And when he had remembered the silver dagger hanging above the great fireplace inside battalion headquarters, he had sprung into action.

Naturally, it was very difficult to steal something so valuable, but he had done it. He had lurked by the fireplace, putting on the air of an impatient officer waiting for a meeting with a long-suffering colonel, and soon enough no one bothered to look his way when he paced in front of the fireplace. As soon as Vest had risen up from his desk in the entryway to go get a fresh cup of coffee, Ron had pushed a chair near the fire, leapt on top of it and wrenched the dagger out of the decorative shield.

It was real silver, but it hadn't been treated or cleaned in a long time and had a patina of dull dirt over it. It wouldn't do to give someone a dirty knife, so he had hoofed it back to his host's house, where he knew Mrs. Bradbury cleaned her silver service every Sunday afternoon, and he found her stash of silver cleaner and rags and worked up a sweat polishing the handle until it gleamed. Then he had looked at his watch and realized that she had only a few hours left in Aldbourne before the train left to... wherever they were going.

He strode into town, doing his best not to run, passing Nixon on the way. The man looked at him with concern, and he realized that he was scowling at the ground.

"Where's Karo... Shütze?" he said, and he sighed when Nixon smiled. "Where is she?"

"Officers' headquarters, of course," Nixon said, and Ron walked off, leaving the man behind. He heard Nixon laughing, as if it were comical, and he guessed he might look comical to anyone else. But he was on a mission.

When he walked in and saw her standing there, the first thing he noticed was her hair. It had grown slightly longer in the last few months and now brushed her shoulders. He realized that she was staring at him, and all he could think to do was to offer his hand. When she shook it, he was disappointed.  _What else did you expect her to do?_

She had looked baffled, but then she had really looked at him, straight in the eye, and Ron's stomach had seized up on reflex, as if he was looking into the gaze of an apex predator. And then, she gave him the highest compliment that she could give anyone: she thought he would survive.

And he had taken out the knife and given it to her, and she had fussed over it and looked at it hungrily, and then she had nearly taken his ear off when she threw it into the wall, and all the blood in his body began to flow south as a feeling of  _her, yes her_  bloomed in his stomach and he realized in one fell swoop that he wanted Karolina Shütze very, very badly.

_Oh, God_ , he had thought as she yanked the knife out of the wall, grinning a very scary grin,  _why now?_  When she was going off into France by herself to take down an entire company of Germans,  _she wouldn't survive that, why would anyone give her that assignment unless they wanted her to get killed, but that was probably what the OSS wanted, they didn't know what else to do with her, she wasn't acclimating to life in England and now she was about to be unleashed in Normandy and oh God, she's gonna die, isn't she?_

Lest she see past his mask and into his brain where he was trying to think of ways to calm his body down, he tried to make excuses that it wasn't a gift, that he had found it accidentally and thought she could use it, and she had bought the lie and given him her knife in return. It's handle was well-worn from use, even had grooves from the imprint of her fingers, and he had looked at her with a mixture of  _please don't go_ and  _I hate you so much right now I want to die_ flitting across his face at the speed of light, and she had stared at him curiously until she gathered her papers up and escaped into the night.

Nixon had been outside, talking to Winters by a jeep, and when Ron walked past him, he held a hand out and gave the man a curious look. It only took him a few seconds to register the emotions on the man's face, and Nixon looked pained. "Oh, no," he said, meaning it. "Oh Christ, Ron."

Ron had returned to his billet, pulled out Karolina's knife, and had stabbed the shit out of his pillow. He pretended it was some Kraut guarding the coastline behind a big gun. He only stopped when there were feathers left, and even then, it wasn't enough. It just wasn't enough.

He shut his eyes tightly and tried not to fixate on the odds.


	11. À Bientôt

Chapter Eleven

À Bientôt

_Aldbourne, England; Caen, Arromanches, Louvieres, and Sainte-Mère-Eglise, France_

_5 - 7 May 1944_

 

Everything had been going smoothly until the five operatives approached Rouen and ran straight into a German checkpoint in the middle of the road.

"Get your papers ready," said Karolina as they idled behind a horse-drawn wagon full of furniture. "And act helpless." She was shocked that they had traveled so far without being interrogated once. It was unlike the German army to let people come and go so freely across the country. There hadn't even been a border guard for France, just a couple of elderly French officials who had waved them through without asking to see any of their identification. That was when Karolina knew the situation in Calais was dire. Her hands were itching to get on her Enigma machine, she already had so much intel to convey.

The two young men in Wehrmacht uniforms held up their hands, signaling them to halt, and Karolina leaned out of the cab, putting on a concerned and innocent mask. "Could you help us?" she asked, and the younger of the Germans walked forward eagerly in the dim morning light. She had long ago learned that the person who asks the first question was usually in control of the outcome of the situation. And there wasn't anything like a young woman in distress that made men bend backwards.

The blonde boy who came to their window couldn't have been more than seventeen, and he wore the bravado of someone who had been forced into a position they didn't quite know how to handle. " _Bonjour, mademoiselle_ ," he said, tipping his helmet. "Where are you going?"

"Normandy," Claude said. "We're looking for lost family members that were fleeing Paris. We got three of our cousins in the back, as well."

"Here are our papers," Karolina said, offering them to the young man, who looked overwhelmed at having the booklets shoved at him. "Our cousins can give you theirs if you go around back."

He clutched the butt of his rifle and nodded to the other man, and the two of them circled the truck to inspect the back, where Karolina hoped Liesel and Katya and Ella would be playing their parts as well. She heard Liesel laugh at something one of the soldiers said and hoped that they would be charmed and feel magnanimous.

" _One man shouldn't be allowed to have all these gorgeous women,_ " said one of the soldiers from the side of the truck, and they both giggled as Claude tightened his hands on the wheel.

" _We could liquidate them from him, share them among the boys in town,_ " said the other, and Karolina slipped her hand into her jacket pocket and rested it on the hilt of her silver knife.

" _Better not, the captain is already under too much stress,_ " said the other, walking up towards the cab. " _He'd kill us on the spot._ " They stopped and smiled at Karolina, who forced herself to smile back shyly.

The brown-haired soldier stepped up to the driver's side and narrowed his eyes at Claude.

"And how is it that you are here and not in the military?"

Claude grimaced. "I have a heart defect," he said. "I'm not fit to fight."

"Well," said the brown-haired soldier. "At least you were spared a painful death." He handed their documents over, and Karolina took them with a thankful look. "Where are you going?"

"Caen," said Karolina, and the blonde soldier laughed. "Is there something wrong?"

"No, mademoiselle," said the blonde one. "The likelihood that you'll find your party is low, people have been swarming into of the city since the British said that they intend to invade through Calais. It's bursting with refugees."

"We'll have to try our best," Claude said with a tight smile. "We've come too far now."

"Good travels," said the brown-haired soldier, stepping back so they could drive through the checkpoint. "Obey the curfew."

"Thank you," Karolina said with a smile at the blonde boy, and he winked lasciviously as they drove past him and urged the truck around the wagon of furniture.

Claude watched them fade into the dust of the road in the rearview mirror. "Everyone well in the back?"

"I winked at him," Ella said, scooting near the partition. "Do you think that helped?"

"No," said Liesel, her voice cold. "Wink again and I'll gouge your eye out."

* * *

Nixon was driving himself nuts.

Well, no, Karolina was driving him nuts, if someone in another country who was no longer physically present had that power. She had left him with too much information before it was his time to know it, and he was burning up with the need to research, to glean some intel, to find a map of Normandy and memorize the whole damn thing, but it was nearly impossible to do that unless he went to battalion headquarters and asked for the appropriate materials, and that was impossible because he couldn't let anyone on to the fact that he knew sensitive, confidential information regarding the largest military invasion in history.

So, two days after Karolina had left, Nixon had marched up to Mark Longshore's billet and hammered his fist on the door.

He didn't know much about Mark, only that he was an American and it had been a relief to see one amongst the other operatives when they had first arrived last Christmas, and since then the man had kept to himself once he realized that the women he had come with could be considered certifiably insane. Mark lived on the outskirts of Aldbourne inside an old stable that had been repurposed into a workshop where he repaired any sort of army machine that went haywire, and Nixon caught sight of the man welding an engine back together as he walked up the path.

Mark cut off the flame and lifted his mask as Nixon stood in the doorway, and the agent gave the man a weary look. "Please don't say you snapped your jeep in half or you broke a typewriter, or you need me to build some sort of steel bulletproof jacket."

Nixon raised an eyebrow. " _Can_  you make a bulletproof jacket?"

"Not yet," Mark said, laying down the soldering iron on his workshop table. "Not out of steel, but I'm working on it." He gave Nixon a quizzical look as he removed his gloves. "You need something."

Nixon grinned and strolled into the workshop. "I just have a lot of questions," he said. "I'm sort of in a bind, and I was hoping you'd be able to help me out."

"Not questions about mechanical engineering," Mark stated. "Questions about the Invasion."

"I'd ask 'How did you know?', but I've learned better than that by now," Nixon said, leaning up against a wooden pillar. "Why aren't you in France?"

Mark's face turned sour. "Apparently, they don't need me yet," he said. "I'm more valuable post-Invasion, when I get to pick up the pieces of what's salvageable and make them into something that works."

The man's fatalistic tone sent a pang of anxiety through Nixon's stomach. "You don't seem optimistic," he said, feigning levity. "Surely Normandy won't be that bad?"

Mark gave him a small smile and a knowing look. "Now, I haven't the slightest clue what you're talking about, you understand." He yanked the visor off his head and sat it down on the workbench. "But, theoretically speaking, yes, I do think that  _if_  the Allied invasion targets Normandy, it will be very, very bad."

"Why?" asked Nixon.

"Well, for one, there are twenty-five anti-aircraft guns lining the French coastline," said Mark. "Fifteen of those are in Normandy. So, for the guys dropping in, there is your first obstacle. And then for the boys who are expected to  _waltz_  onto the beach and defeat an enemy aiming down at them from a cliff..."

"Karolina and the others were sent over there to disable those guns," Nixon countered.

Mark gave him searching look. "Do you really think they'll be able to do that?" he said. "Sure, they can try, but if they try too hard, they'll be killed. They're mostly over there to have eyes and ears on the ground, and if the OSS and SIS can convince them to stick their necks out for the cause and try a little sabotage, then they'll certainly encourage them."

"So you don't think that Karolina could do it?" Nixon said, absorbing all this. "Even with her expertise in explosives?"

Mark snorted. "The moment Shütze is alone, I guarantee you, she's gonna high-tail it back to Germany," he said, and then caught the look on Nixon's face. "Not to rejoin the Abwehr, if that's what you're thinking. Nah, she's got unfinished business."

"With Droessler?" Nixon guessed, and Mark raised an eyebrow.

"She told you about Droessler?" said Mark, a little incredulous. Nixon nodded, and Mark shrugged. "Well, color me shocked. That's supposed to be one of her biggest secrets."

There was a line Nixon had to walk now between digging for more and seeming all-knowing, which he certainly was not. "After she got the letter in the mail, the one full of ashes, she was a little upset."

"Oh, the Abwehr's been doing that for years," said Mark, waving it off. "But now that she's loose in Europe, I bet you a thousand bucks that she won't even be there when we land. Droessler's been her obsession for years, I heard. She tried to escape back to France in '41 to seek her sweet revenge, but the OSS found out and detained her until she promised to behave."

"What exactly did he do that was so bad?" asked Nixon.

"Well, shit," Mark said, wiping his brow. "The way I've heard it, Droessler was the one who killed Shütze's brother."

* * *

The road traffic became more congested as the operatives approached Caen, and after standing still for twenty minutes, Katya and Liesel exchanged a look that Karolina did not miss in the rearview mirror.

"If you want to go, you can go," she said, turning and looking at the two women who had been abnormally quiet for some time. "If you do not mind the walking."

"I like walking," said Liesel, stretching her legs out in front of her. She looked out of the back at the truck at the people who strode down the dirt street, weaving in and out of cars as they made their way towards the city. "And we would blend in."

"I feel like a duck sitting," said Katya, and Ella laughed. "What?"

"'Sitting duck'," she said with a grin, and Katya rolled her eyes as she picked up her gunny sack and suitcase.

"Then it is here that we part," said Claude, turning around in the driver's seat. Both women gathered their things and jumped out of the back of the truck and walked around to the passenger's side of the truck cab. Liesel walked off with a nod of her head to both Claude and Karolina, but Katya hesitated, and Karolina was surprised when she reached up a hand to be shook in parting.

" _Do svidaniye_ ," she said quietly after Karolina took her hand. "I will be back."

"I know you will," Karolina said, and with a wink, Katya merged into the foot traffic around them and walked up the road.

"And now we are three," said Ella, leaning over the partition. "How much further until Arromanches?"

Claude checked his watch. "It should only take an hour to travel to Bayeux from here," he said. "But at this pace, it's not likely." The truck idled, and he shifted a gear and inched upward as the line of traffic moved. "We might run out of petrol before we get to Bayeux."

"I will abandon the truck whether we do or not," Karolina said. "I plan to arrive in Sainte-Mère-Eglise on foot."

Thirty minutes later, the line of cars began to move, and they passed the source of the hold-up: a car had been overturned in the middle of the road, killing its two passengers, a man and a woman, or so said the German MPs that had been waving traffic along. When they passed the car, however, Karolina saw that the dead man had an exit wound from the back of his head, and anti-war pamphlets had spilled out of the car's backseat and onto the road.

"Drive faster," she whispered to Claude, and he shifted gears and left the line of cars attempting to enter Caen behind them.

Karolina had never seen much of the French coast - just Calais, back when she was trying to enter England for the first time - and was struck by the freshness of the air in comparison to the devastated countryside. Though it was early May, it seemed as if the French had decided to let their fields lay fallow, and every now and then they passed by an abandoned plow rusting where it stood and homes with holes in the roofs, and Ella sighed.

"I do not understand why the French never clean up," she said.

"Pardon?" said Claude, giving her a glare in the mirror.

"You are content to stay destroyed," Ella said. "Why?"

"What's the point of rebuilding when everything will be smashed again?" he said, shrugging. "Better to let the war play out than to run in circles."

"Italians would be sweeping the dust away an hour after the guns had stopped," Ella said.

"We are not in Italy," Claude replied. "Or haven't you noticed?"

Ella rolled her eyes and stared out of the dusty windshield at the road ahead. "I have noticed," she said dryly.

They fell silent as they rushed through the French countryside, and Karolina stared out of the passenger window at the abandoned cars and emptied suitcases that littered the highway. It was as if the French had never stopped fleeing Paris since the Germans first arrived in 1940. She wondered what life was like in the city now - knowing the Nazis, they would have tried hard to suck all of the joy and frivolity out of the city. Surely it was not so awful that people still left in droves, but then again, the coastal French were certainly nervous enough to inspire another mass exodus, and their fears were not unfounded.

They reached the outskirts of Bayeux in under an hour, and behind them, Ella took in a shaky breath. "We part," she said simply, and gripped Karolina's shoulder. "But I will see you soon."

Karolina reached up and covered the girl's hand with her own and gave it a squeeze. "We will," she said with a smile. "Weep some more, and the people of Arromanches will give you anything you ask for."

Ella chuckled and lifted her sack from the back of the truck, and then hopped down and gave them both a wave as Karolina turned and watched the girl fade from sight as they bumped down the road. She hoped Ella would make it on her own, and she forced herself to turn back around and face the road ahead.

* * *

Ron walked into the mess hall, his head an explosion of calculations and suppositions and the main thought of the operatives' boat getting blown to bits by a German torpedo, or all of them getting caught by the Gestapo in Holland and being lined up and shot against a wall, or if they were in France, if they were smuggled in successfully, being yanked out of whatever disguise they were donning and being tossed to those vicious German Shepherds that the Gestapo used as intimidation tactics, or...

Or, he could be honest with himself, he thought, and admit he didn't give two shits about those operatives, and that it was Karolina he imagined getting murdered in all sorts of horrible ways, but he couldn't admit that. He couldn't. He wasn't sure what would happen if he did, but the idea made him nervous, and that set him on edge. He was never nervous, he couldn't afford to be nervous.

He was about to get in line for another lackluster meal when he noticed Nixon sitting by himself, staring down into a cup of coffee and abstaining from any food. Nixon must have felt him staring, because he looked up and jerked his head for Ron to come over. Ron sighed and walked out of his place and over towards the man's table, hoping he had good news, or any news for that matter.

Nixon gave Ron a weary look before motioning for the man to sit down, and as much as Ron didn't want to ask him, the words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. "Have you heard from Karolina?"

Despite his apparent ennui, Nixon grinned down at his coffee. "'Karolina'," he said with a raised eyebrow. "I would have never thought."

Ron sucked his teeth, and when he refused to comment, Nixon gave him a consoling look. "I haven't heard anything," he said. "But it's only been two days, you know, and at least you got to tell her how you -"

"No," Ron said, cutting the man off. "That's not... no, that didn't happen, I was just... I apologized."

Nixon narrowed his eyes. "A guy doesn't apologize to a pretty gal and then leaves looking like he's contemplating self-immolation."

Ron put his palms flat on the table. "I am not going to talk about this with you," he said, and Nixon snorted. "I was just wondering if you had any intel, considering you're the intelligence officer."

Nixon took a sip of his coffee. "I did learn some things today, about her, but nothing that..." The man drawled off, and Ron looked at him carefully. "Nothing that I think she would want us to know."

Ron leaned back. "What does that mean? Is it classified?"

"I don't think so," the man said, shaking his head. "But still, it's something else."

"Tell me," Ron said. He needed something, anything to distract him from the visions in his head.

Nixon raised an eyebrow. "What do you know about Karolina?"

Ron thought back to the night at the pub, where everything had turned to chaos - but before the woman in the green dress had gotten her knife to the stomach, Katya and Karolina had played a tense drinking game. "She was born in April," he said, and Nixon smiled. "She didn't want to answer questions about her parents or family, she was in the BDM, she went to prison for treason." He looked up at Nixon. "Among other things."

Nixon nodded. "That's about all I knew as well, statistically," he said. "But Longshore today told me about her brother."

"Her  _brother_?" Ron said, confused. "She never said she had a brother."

" _Had_ ," Nixon said. "She had a brother, Philippe. He was in the SS. The head of the Abwehr, a guy named Droessler, killed him as he and Karolina tried to escape Germany." Nixon took a sip of his coffee as Ron digested this. "He's been trying to kill her for years."

* * *

Claude looked up at Karolina from where he stood in the road. "This is goodbye, then," he said, and they shook hands. "Be safe. I will see you in a month's time."

"Good luck," she said, gripping onto the steering wheel, looking down at the man and trying to look positive. "Get in touch if you need to. I will help you."

He nodded and stared off into the field behind him, where a farmhouse had been blown to pieces. " _Mon pays pauvre_ ," he muttered, shaking his head before turning to her, a new light in his eyes. "Let's rip these bastards to shreds."

She smiled at that, feeling the adrenaline rush into her stomach and the negativity wash away. "That is the spirit," she said, pressing down on the brake and shifting gears. " _À bientôt_."

He smiled back, and she drove away, focusing on the road that was growing more unkempt and full of potholes by the kilometer. The daylight was fading, and she didn't want to get into the town when it was dark. That would look too suspicious, a random woman showing up under cover of the night. She needed to walk in, be clearly visible, look so confused that the German soldiers would immediately dismiss her as some dramatic French woman on the verge of a breakdown and nothing they wanted as their problem.

She stretched an arm across the cab, reveling in the ability to stretch out now that she was  _alone, you are alone for the first time in four years, back in Europe though in France, and if you wanted to, you could turn the truck around and head back north towards Paris and then from there go East and abandon the truck near Strasbourg and cross the border, slip into the Black Forest and acclimate yourself to the environment, kill a few Gestapo, steal a uniform and head north to Berlin and -_

She braked hard, and the truck jolted to a stop. Her hands were shaking from the residual adrenaline, or fear, or nervousness, or something else she didn't understand because it had not occurred to her until right then that she was  _free_. She was free for the moment, she was free for a month, and she would need a month's head start when the OSS discovered she was not at her post, but it didn't matter because she most likely wouldn't survive the invasion, and that was fine because she wasn't planning on surviving the war and the fact that she had gotten this far, that the Allied forces might make it into Europe depending on her help was...

_Depending on her help_ , and suddenly she saw the men's faces in the pub, and Nixon laughing with her in the officers' headquarters and Winters looking at her with horror whenever she did something he didn't anticipate, and she saw Speirs' angry face scowling down at her on the cot and glaring at her from across the mess hall and heard his breath as they ran beside each other and his deeply confusing gaze as he gave her the silver knife and the way he always seemed like he wanted to punch the wall when she spoke...

Could she desert them?

The bottom of her feet tingled with guilt as she drove onward, passing Carentan without a glance, and she pulled over after she saw a sign for Blosville. She sat in the cab of the truck, breathing heavily, torn in two directions. She needed to kill Droessler before he had the opportunity to be arrested for war crimes and tried by the Allies. He was hers to butcher, and he knew it. But she couldn't let the Easy Company men die in exchange for one man, who had already caused so much death. They didn't deserve that. And they were counting on her, not because they were using her like the OSS was to do their dirty work, but because they had faith. They believed she would help them. She had nothing left in her life, no redeeming quality and no one to live for, but if she did that, if she abandoned those men to the German gunners below, she would most likely put a pistol in her mouth in the near future and pull the trigger. The guilt would be too much.

She slumped forward and leaned her head on the steering wheel.  _Scheiß drauf_. Nothing could ever be easy, could it? Nothing could ever go her way. She was trapped, running in circles for a government agency that saw her as their little time bomb, but in debt to a group of men that could have made her life hell, and had chosen to accept her instead.

In her pocket, the silver dagger dug into her ribs, and she raised her head and looked at the beginning of the sunset with tired eyes. She pushed open the door of the truck, grabbed her suitcases, and began to walk down the road towards Sainte-Mère-Eglise.

* * *

Ron was sitting in an officer's meeting the next morning in Sink's office when he heard the distinct sounds of the Enigma machine roaring to life overhead.

Colonel Sink paused and stared up at the loud crunching noises that were shaking the ceiling but tossed a satisfied look towards the officers of Easy Company. "I suppose that answers my next question," he said with a smirk. "'Where in the hell are those goddamn operatives?'" he read from the piece of paper in his hand, then tossed it onto his desk. "Let's go find out."

Speirs was the first one out the door, with Nixon and Winters on his heels, but then men restrained themselves from taking the stairs two steps at a time. Respectfully, they waited for Colonel Sink to enter the machine's room before following him, and they saw Mark at the machine's feeder, gathering the tape as it churned out of the receiver. He stood up and saluted as Sink walked into the room, but Sink motioned for him to sit back down.

"None of that," Sink said. "Just tell me what it says."

"Still receiving messages, sir," Mark said, hurriedly putting another roll of paper into the reserve hold of the machine. "I think it's multiple transmissions."

Nixon walked over to where Mark sat and held the draping tape aloft. Colonel Sink came to his side and squinted down at the letters printed on the tape. "I'll be damned," Sink said. "Looks like a bunch of garbled nonsense. Isn't that something else?"

"And you can read it out long-form for us, Agent Longshore?" Sink asked, and Mark nodded.

"As soon as it stops, I will, sir," he said, gathering up more of the tape, and then as if it heard him, the machine shuddered to a halt. Mark let out a breath and gathered up the tape, his eyes running up and down the paper.

Ron walked forward and stood next to Sink, annoyed at the slow pace. "Well?" he said, and Sink looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

Mark worked his way down the paper. "Yes, there are five here, just as I thought," he said, chuckling quietly with a smile on his face. "Seems as if they made it after all. 'ARRIVED, CAEN, PHANTOM AND BANSHEE, SECURE. ARRIVED, ARROMANCHES, SPRITE, SECURE. ARRIVED, LOUVIERES, SPOOK, SECURE.'" He paused and smiled at the last one. "Of course, Agent Shütze is a bit more detailed."

"What did she say?" Nixon said, leaning forward.

Mark smirked. "'ARRIVED, SME, GHOST, UNDER WATCH, SIGHTED COASTAL DEFENSE, ON JOB HANG TOUGH, SECURE'."

Winters smiled at that, and Nixon bumped his shoulder. "Hang tough?"

"Hang tough," Winters replied, and Ron found himself smiling.


	12. Bonne Chance

Chapter Twelve

Bonne Chance

_Aldbourne, England; Sainte-Mère-Eglise, France_

_May 1944_

_8 May 1944_

Karolina woke up to the sound of doors slamming beneath her, followed by a loud French voice complaining to the open air as chickens clucked in panic under the window outside.

" _I should throw the slut out,_ " said the Madame as she stomped on the pea gravel underfoot. " _Benoit is out of his mind, the man has gone soft in the head. He only wants to fuck her, that's all._ "

Footsteps followed her stomps on the gravel - clearly she was complaining to someone else. " _She said she was looking for her sisters, and she didn't look like she wanted to fuck Benoit."_

" _Well of course she doesn't!"_ the woman replied to the girlish voice.  _"No one wants to, not even me, and I'm his wife! I wouldn't leave that man alone with a sheep. It's bad enough the Germans come in here every night -"_

_"Louise,"_ cautioned the girlish voice.  _"Lower your tone, don't let them hear you talking about them in that way..."_

_"I don't care,"_ said the loud woman, but she spoke the words in a slightly less-carrying shout, and then continued in a murmur to the other woman in the courtyard, whoever she was. Karolina blinked at the ray of light that was infiltrating the room through the crack of her curtain and sighed. Her entire body felt stiff, she had a headache, and the pillow hadn't been a soft as she would have liked, but still, she was in a bed. She blinked at the ceiling and began to formulate a plan in her mind.

* * *

She had reached Sainte-Mère-Eglise at half-past seven the evening before, and when she walked into the town's main square from the winding road, she had run into an entire platoon of German soldiers who had wolf-whistled at her loudly as she made her way to the sidewalk. She wiped a hand across her forehead and her palm came away coated in dust. If the Germans thought her attractive enough in this state, the pickings in town must be slim.

Karolina stopped on the corner and glanced around the the town center, taking in the antiquated church with its gothic spire, a dusty fountain next to a Great War memorial, and the various cafes and stores that had been boarded up and abandoned - one had a red Star of David painted on the door, and the windows had been smashed and left jagged. Absolutely no one was in the street, except for the soldiers she had passed - the first priority would be to find some civilians who could point her in the direction of the nearest inn. She sighed, and then stiffened as she noticed someone walking towards her in her peripheral vision.

It was a German sergeant, dressed to the nines, with black hair and mirth-filled blue eyes. " _S'il vous plaît, permettez-moi de vous aider, Mademoiselle,"_ he said, looking proud at his French, but something in his gaze told her he wasn't here to flirt with her.

Karolina kept her face neutral but friendly. Maybe she could try to flirt anyway, convince him that she wasn't a threat. "What makes you think I need help?"

He grinned, but his eyes remained sharp. "Well, you are covered in dust from the road," he said, walking around to face her. "And you don't seem to know where you are going."

"I  _don't_  know where I am going," she said, smoothing her hair back. "I am looking for a hotel, however."

He raised an eyebrow. "The only hotel in this town closed three weeks ago," he said with an apologetic look. "But there is a cafe on the other side of town that lets rooms above the bar."

She sighed and bent down to pick up her suitcases, but the man stopped her with a hand to her arm, and she froze. He immediately withdrew, and in the light of dusk she could see that he was embarrassed, or pretending to be for the sake of his charade. "I apologize," he said with a nod. "I meant to say, let me and the other men take those for you."

The back of her neck tingled as she saw two other officers lounging in a doorway a few yards down the street. "I wouldn't want to inconvenience you," she said, keeping her tone light. "I've already come so far, a few more streets are nothing."

"Nonsense," said the man, waving for his fellow soldiers to come over. "You look as if you've come all the way from Paris, and we would be happy to assist you." The two other men strode up and took in her appearance. "This is  _Uteroffizier_  Schumacher and  _Leutnant_  Grann, and I am  _Leutnant_ Scholz, at your service."

"And who are you, exactly?" said Schumacher, pulling out a notebook and a pencil from his jacket pocket and studying her outfit with a narrowed gaze.

_Oh, I am Karolina Shütze, enemy of the Reich, wanted for treason and murder._ "My name is Claire Gautier," she said easily, and he scribbled her name down, checked his watch for the time, and recorded that as well. "I am not from Paris, though," she said, glancing at Scholz. "My family is from Boulogne, I am trying to track them down."

"Ah, a refugee," said Grann, stooping down and picking up her suitcase with a groan. "Carrying a bag full of bricks, apparently."  _Good cop._

"A typewriter," she corrected, and Scholz grabbed her other suitcase as he led them down the road into town. "I was a writer, before."

Schumacher gave her an unreadable look.  _Bad cop, then._  "War is not conducive to the arts," he said in a blank tone, and she nodded in agreement. "What do you write now?"

"Nothing," she said. "I was writing for the daily journal, but everyone fled town. I was unwilling to part with the typewriter, however."

"How long are you staying with us, Mademoiselle Gautier?" asked Scholz. "Or are you just passing through?"

Karolina gave a very Gallic shrug. "For as long as I can," she said. "Until the panic in Calais dies down. I was hoping to go further south, as I think most of my family is going to Nantes, where my aunt lives."

"I have never been to Nantes," said Grann. "Is it pleasant?"

_Oh, goddamn it. What did she know about Nantes?_ "It is beautifully ancient, and the Loire River is splendid in the summer," she said, hoping that was passible. Why had she chosen Nantes?

"Perhaps one day, I will see it for myself," said Scholz, who picked up the pace down the road. Karolina could see that the houses on this side of the town had more space than their cramped cousins in the square, and the wind carried a hint of salt from the sea. "Travelers have been coming in and out of town all month. We're in charge of making sure they go where they belong, so to speak."

_I bet you do,_ Karolina thought. "Do you always carry their luggage?"

There was a beat of silence, and she wondered if she had been too acerbic, if she should not have joked with them, but then Grann laughed jovially. "No, mademoiselle, we do not," he said. "I'm sure Scholz here took pity on you. A lady should never carry her own things."

The men chatted amongst themselves about the various French people that had filtered through the town, mocking the ones who had burst into hysterics when their things had been confiscated and reminisced about a fat man who had walked so far that his shoes had burst at the seams. Karolina smiled when they snickered and thought about the man who had been shot in the head by the side of the road. She wondered how many other refugees these three men had dispatched in the same way.

"There it is," Scholz said, nodding ahead at a two-story farmhouse that glowed with light and laughter. " _Le Poisson Noyé._  The French are hilarious."

"Very unique," she said, and she rubbed her temple. She was going on hour twenty-six without any sleep and her eyes stung like mad. "I hope there are some vacancies."

"I will inquire with the landlady," said Grann, setting her suitcase down by the front door and taking off his hat. "We have a special accord."

"Grann owes her a high tab," said Scholz as the other man stepped inside. "Schumacher, why don't you go help him persuade Madame Lebrun while Mademoiselle Gautier and I have a little chat."

Schumacher gave her a knowing look as he too walked into the bar, and Scholz turned to her with a cold smile.  _The silver knife is in the right pocket of your jacket, your pistol is tucked into the back of your skirt's waistband. Close contact requires knife, a little more distance and the pistol would be more effective. The other two will fire immediately when they hear the first shots, average casualty rate of eleven persons -_

"Now, mademoiselle," Scholz said, pulling a cigarette from his case and lighting it. "Many people have come into this town lately - some stay and some go. These are confusing times, and people count on us to keep the peace." He blew out a lungful of smoke into the air above her head. "We currently have ten refugees staying in Sainte-Mère-Eglise, now eleven, including yourself. We keep close watch on those who enter our little town, and if someone upsets the peace, well..." He shrugged, leaving Karolina to come to her own conclusions. "We act swiftly."

She did her best to look meek. "I have no intention..." she muttered, but Scholz held up a hand.

"Do you?" he said. "Let us be honest with each other, mademoiselle - if you are lying to us, if you aren't looking for your family, if you are not who you say you are, we will discover this information, and you will be arrested."

She blinked at him, summoning the feeling of shock. "No, sir, no," she said, hoping she looked genuine. "I'm just looking for my family, sir. I just want to find out if they are alive, I would never..."

He stared her down, and she wilted under his gaze, pantomiming fright. "Very well," he said, straightening up and opening the door to the building. "We will certainly be seeing you sometime soon." She stepped inside the crowded, dim bar and calculated her chances at outwitting Scholz as they made their way to the back of the room where a large woman in an apron was scolding Grann, who looked as if he were having the time of his life.

Madame Lebrun was a taciturn woman who didn't look thrilled at the idea of another itinerant border taking up space above her bar. "I hope you have money," she said. "Otherwise, get out."

Karolina patted her pocketbook in her jacket. "How much per week?"

Lebrun sucked on her teeth and gave Karolina a once-over. "Twenty-five francs," she said.

"Highway robbery!" exclaimed Grann, who was leaning up against the bar. "Last week you gave some idiot man a room for fifteen francs."

"Times are tough," said Lebrun, turning to face Grann. "And you still owe me eighteen francs for the amount you drink." Grann held his hands up in surrender and laughed, and Lebrun gave Karolina a sour look. "Twenty-five francs or get out."

She handed over the crumpled money with a glare, and Lebrun pocketed it with an air of satisfaction. "Breakfast is served at seven, lunches and dinners you pay for yourself. The washroom is upstairs, and linens are cleaned on the weekends. No overnight visitors."

Karolina raised an eyebrow at 'overnight visitors', but Lebrun ignored her and Scholz sat her suitcases down next to her. "A pleasure, mademoiselle," he said, giving her a little bow. "Enjoy your stay with us."

* * *

In the sunlight, the room was cleaner and sparser than it had looked the evening before. She had all the same furniture she had in her little shared room in Aldbourne - a bed, a nightstand, a dresser with a mirror, where she had sat her suitcases the night before. She slid out from under the covers and opened the clasp, relieved to see her Enigma machine still safe in its box.

_So much to say, so much to tell them, and yet nothing to tell them at all, nothing important._ Well, arriving in town alive and positioned in her observation zone was pretty important. She checked her wristwatch - it was seven in the morning. She would miss breakfast, then, but she had eaten a large supper in the bar downstairs after Madame Lebrun's husband had carried up her suitcases and given her the key to the room and asked her if she would like anything to eat. Supper was three francs, and lunch was two. She'd be bankrupt by the time the Americans invaded.

She opened up the box and turned on the machine. It clicked to life, humming with the electric power she was stealing from the lamp cord's outlet, and she hovered her hands over the keys.  _What to say?_ Was it strange that she was more concerned with what Easy Company was doing than how she would operate undetected by Scholz and his little gang of intelligence officers? She knew the airborne officers would be the first to read her messages.  _Has Nixon figured out the maps of Normandy yet? Had Winters found the book of Walt Whitman's poems she left for him? Had Speirs stabbed someone with her knife while she was away?_ She hoped so.

In the end, she settled for the simple, if not descriptive.  _BCXQ KNFB VOTT VSPN PVPS VKLU LUGK NQUS RQPZ VAQU QLHH LEIV IM. Arrived in SME, under watch, sighted defense, on job, hang tough._

"WHAT in the HELL is that CLATTERING?" screeched Madame Lebrun from below.

"Mademoiselle Gautier is a typist, my dear," said Benoit calmly.

"What does anyone need to type at seven in the morning?" she yelled, and Karolina smiled as she hit SEND.

* * *

_19 May 1944_

Life in Sainte-Mère-Eglise was deeply, incredibly, mind-numbingly boring.

The town was the largest city on that side of Carentan and therefore the natural meeting point of farmers, fishermen, and swarms of German soldiers. In fact, German soldiers made up a large percentage of the town's population, and they intermingled with the fishermen who came for dinner at  _La Poisson Noyé_. She briefly considered asking Madame Lebrun what had happened to the people in town, but decided against it. Lebrun already despised her presence in  _Le Poisson Noyé_  and made it clear to Karolina every morning when she slammed a bowlful of porridge down in front of her and cast a wicked look out of the corner of her eye towards her husband, Benoit.

He was an older gentleman and informed Karolina with a twinkling eye that Madame Lebrun was his second wife, and would most certainly be his last. He owned a significant amount of property near the town, out by the coast, where he grew wheat and maintained a large brewery that fed Le Poisson and every bar between Sainte-Mère-Eglise and Bayeux. "It was the only thing the Germans did not destroy," he said, smoking his pipe as he wheeled out a bicycle. "But that is only because they are desperate for their beer. It is the only solace in times of war."

She grew to appreciate the man's help and his politeness, always asking her if there was anything she needed, if she was comfortable, or if she needed help finding her family. He took interest in what she did every day, and if he hadn't of been French, she would have suspected that he was a spy. He was observant and always saved her if a few German soldiers got overly friendly when she had her supper in the bar, and one day he called out to her and asked her if she wouldn't mind helping him with some bookkeeping.

Karolina had agreed to help him type up a running list of accounts in exchange for a ride into the country to get away from the monotony of walking around town and asking about her long-lost nonexistent relatives. He was delighted to have the company, and the two of them set off on bicycles towards Foucarville, a little hamlet twenty minutes towards the coast.

"You remind me of my Sophies," he said as they set out. "My wife, Sophie, and my daughter, Sophie. Both of them were carried off by the Spanish flu in our youth, God bless them. They were both bright and strong, just like you, mademoiselle."

"Thank you," she said, smiling at his compliment.  _What a charmer._  "I am sorry for your loss."

He waved her commiserations away. "It was centuries ago," he said. "Another lifetime."

A convoy of Germans in tracks passed by them, and Benoit took off his cap and waved it at the men. Seeing their favorite barkeeper, the boys shouted out hellos and waved back, and few of them blew kisses to Karolina. They passed, and the affable look faded from Benoit's face.

"Tell me, mademoiselle," he said as they pedaled down a sun-filled lane. "Can you speak German?"

Karolina sneezed from the brightness hitting her eyes. "I know a few words," she said, swerving to avoid a pothole. "But not much."

"That is a shame," said Benoit. "I was hoping you could interpret something for me."

She shook her head. "Perhaps Grann or Scholz could do it for you?" she suggested, tightening her grip around the handlebars. "They seem to be regulars at the bar."

"I don't think it is quite their forte, though they do enjoy my beer enough that they would no doubt humor me," he said. "No, I have found an old copy of the works of Nietzsche, and I was wondering if you would be able to understand it."

"Ah, I have never read him," she said, lying. "He always seemed a little intimidating to me."

"Well, he wrote all over the world, especially in Suez," Benoit said, glancing at her quickly. "I wonder what the weather there is like."

"It is still cold in Suez," she said carefully, her heart beating a little faster. He slowed down to a stop and looked at her curiously. She had taken a gamble, and she hoped that her instincts were right, but even if they were not she could dismiss the words as nonsensical.

Benoit gave her a small smile. "The dice are not yet on the table," he said, reaching out a hand. " _Vive la Résistance?_ "

She grinned and took his hand, quickly shook it and glanced around them. "Careful how loudly you say that," she said in a low voice. "It is reassuring that I am not alone."

Benoit nodded and began to pedal again, and Karolina followed. "Who are you with?" he asked. "I would say you were from the Paris Resistance, but your accent isn't Parisian, nor is it Northern."

"I was sent here by the OSS and SIS, out of London," she said. "And you, are you  _Maquis_?"

"I lead a small group of men and women," he said, ducking to avoid a branch. "They are spread out thinly, however. We've been waiting on the BBC to tell us when the Invasion is nigh."

Karolina looked behind her, checking to see if the road was still empty. "I would much rather speak on this after we get to the brewery," she said.

"We will skip the brewery today," he replied. "We shall go to Les Cruttes instead. You must see and report back on what the Germans are doing to the beaches."

"What  _are_  they doing?" she asked.

He looked over at her, surprised. "Why, you haven't heard? They're doubling the fortifications, putting up barbed wire amongst the waves, barring the way for any landing craft, all up and down the coastline of Normandy."

" _Scheiße_ ," she muttered, and Benoit laughed humorlessly.

"That's the spirit," he said, pedaling a bit faster. A burst of wind carried the faintest hint of salt air with the searing odor of hot metal, and Karolina glanced at the power lines overhead and was struck with an idea.

* * *

_20 May 1944_

Ron stood in front of the overblown map of the Normandy coastline and lit his third cigarette as the rest of the men from the 506th ambled out of the pavilion.  _Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, Sword._ His eyes flickered between the carved-out beaches and he studied the towns situated above each section. Caen was sandwiched above Sword and Juno, Arromanches was on the coastline beneath Bayeux, Louvieres was a stone's throw away from Omaha, and Sainte-Mère-Eglise was a safe distance away from Utah. He blinked.  _Safe?_

When he was a kid, he had a crush on a little blonde girl in his third-grade classroom, Mary Guthrie - she was always dressed so neatly and took care that all of her pencils were sharpened and always knew the answers to the arithmetic questions their teacher asked. Ron was the kid whose shirt was always untucked, whose pencils were always blunt and who loved to read. At first, he didn't know what to do, only knew that he wanted to get her attention, and so he began to shout stupid things in the classroom and got in trouble with the teacher. She didn't seem very impressed, and one day, desperate for her to simply look at him, he walked up to her on the playground and shoved her into the gravel.

Mary Guthrie had immediately burst into tears and he had received the paddling of a lifetime, which only felt worse because he realized that he no longer liked Mary Guthrie. As she sat there on the ground, boo-hoo crying her eyes out and milking the melodrama for all it was worth, he willed her to stand up and push him back. In fact, none of the girls he had taken on dates in high school or after had ever stood up to his piss poor attitude - they all crumpled at the first intonation of a harsh word, never tried to scale the wall he built in order to keep them out. It was a pattern he had followed, until he had joined the airborne, had come to Aldbourne and met a woman that had taken one look at him and picked a fight.

It was stupid to consider that anywhere in Europe could be safe, that the French coastline was a safe place to be, that an ex-German operative gave any concern to safety, that he should even worry if Karolina was safe. Of course she wasn't safe, and that triggered an instinctual panic inside him that he had never felt towards a person before, only towards objects that he felt were  _his_ and  _his alone_  - but she could bring him down to the ground in a fight, could rig up explosions, would kill to achieve her objectives. She could take care of herself. It was incredibly attractive and it made him outrageously nervous.

"I'm worried, too," said Nixon, appearing beside him. "All this is so complicated." The man looked at the cigarette butts on the ground by Ron's shoes and raised an eyebrow. "You seem contemplative."

"I'm memorizing the map," Ron said dryly.

Nixon shook his head. "She'll be fine, Ron," he said, and Ron's shoulders tightened. They way Nixon saw right through him made him mad as hell. "We got another message from her today. Not good news, though."

"What?" he demanded, turning and giving Nixon the full intensity of his stare. The man squinted at Ron's sullen expression and turned to the map with a sigh.

"She went out on a little bike ride," Nixon said, picking up the pointer from where it stood against the map's frame. "And told us that the German army is setting up stronger defenses against all five beach heads. Somehow, it seems that they've figure out that Kent is a sham."

Ron shrugged. He was shocked the Germans hadn't cracked the facade of inflatable airplanes and tanks earlier. "Anything else?"  _Was she still in one piece?_

"Yeah, she also said she hooked up with a member of the Resistance, a leader of a  _Maquis_ group, who happens to be the man she's staying with." Nixon snorted at the disgruntled look on Ron's face. "Yes, she's staying with a man  _and_ his wife. They're sending additional Maquis groups to get in contact with the other agents on the coastline."

"Sabotage?" Ron asked. Nixon nodded.

"They're going to terminate the power grid along the coast, cut the phone lines and interrupt any radio transmissions," he said, running a hand along the beachhead of Utah. "No clue how we're going to be able to communicate with each other when we get there, though. I'll leave that to George Luz."

Nixon tapped a town called Les Cruttes with the rubber point of the stick. "She said she and the mystery Frenchman observed the German garrisons from this town," he said. "They were reinforcing everything, bringing in new anti-aircraft artillery. Said there were about five guns in that area, and ten more along her beachhead."

Ron shook his head. "No one can disable fifteen guns," he said. "Even if she thinks she can do it - it's not possible. She'll get killed." He chewed on his lip, and Nixon watched him with a concerned face.

"You know, it's okay to talk to me about her," Nixon said, and Ron sighed. "I know you like her, I like her, too. That's okay, Ron."

"I don't like her, I just..."  _Respect her? Want her?_ "I tolerate her."

Nixon laughed dryly and looked down at his pockets, searching for his flask. "What did you say to her, the night she left?"

Ron turned away, ignoring the man. There was no way he would let Nixon intrude on that moment, even if it was the most embarrassingly sentimental thing he had ever done. "If the Germans amp up the coastline any more, we won't even reach the drop zones. The planes will just drop out of the sky from all the bullet holes."

He could feel Nixon's stare boring into the back of his head. "Did you at least let her know that you don't think she's Nazi scum?" the man asked, and Ron wanted nothing more than to kick Nixon over the edge of one of the famous white cliffs of Dover if it meant that he'd never have to answer any questions about his personal feelings again.

"Yes, I did."

Nixon raised his flask. "Well, at least you won't have that on your conscience if the do planes drop out of the sky," he said bitterly, and walked out of the pavilion.

* * *

_30 May 1944_

That night, in her dream, Philippe found her again.

They were back in Hamburg, back at the same harbor where he had been gunned down, still trying to board the same little tugboat that they had chartered to take them out of the city and to Norway. She was wearing the same disguise, covered in blood, and Philippe was lying dead on the ground, his body ripped apart by bullets. She jumped when he opened his eyes.

_"It is almost time,"_ he said in a whisper carried on the wind.  _"You kept your promise after all."_

In the dream, across the river, Nixon, Winters, and Speirs stood on a bridge and waved at her, and she waved back, but then they collapsed one by one, and she stifled a scream as blood poured into the river below. In the strange way that dreams were cyclical and time-warped, all of this happened at once and in slow motion.

_"Who will you help first?"_ Philippe asked, his body withering, turning to ash the ground before her eyes.  _"The ones who love you, or yourself?"_

She woke up then, sitting straight up in her damp sheets as lighting illuminated the room. She reached a shaking hand to the bedside table and picked up a vial of her little blue pills and popped one in her mouth, slurping down some water and resting her sweaty brow against the cool iron of the headboard. That one had been particularly horrible, even though all her dreams had been disturbing of late. Every one centered around the men and twisted her gut in ways that made her realize that she cared deeply about their safety. It was dangerous to let these feelings cloud up her mind so close to the Invasion, but she couldn't help it. Her brain was clearly on a course of self-destruction.

She wished they could send her a message. She wanted to know what they were doing. She grabbed the silver knife that sat on her nightstand and felt the chill of the metal settle into her flesh. It was a very good gift, from an extraordinarily peculiar man, who Karolina found starring in her nightmares more and more as the days passed.

_Men don't give gifts unless they want something from you_ , said the voice of the matron who had kept them under careful watch in their apartment in Berlin. She started at the interloper inside her head and put the knife down in her lap. Some of the girls had gotten flowers from admirers within the Abwehr, and some had to decline dates from men they met in cafes, but Karolina had never been bothered by the romantic assaults of men. She had simply been too busy to speak to anyone, too focused to want to socialize after work. But now this cold, determined American man had given her this lovely knife - not a bouquet of flowers, not chocolates, not silk stockings, something useful and valuable, something deadly. She rather liked that. She also had no clue what to do in the situation at all.

The sound of footsteps on the stairs broke her reverie, and she climbed out of bed and stood by the door, the knife in her hand. The clock face on her nightstand told her it was two in the morning, and she knew that no one meaning well visited after midnight.

"Claire," whispered Benoit on the other side of the door. "Wake up."

She opened the door quickly and took in Benoit's pale face and hurried look. "What's wrong?"

He walked into the room and grabbed her suitcases and opened them up on the bed. "You have to go," he said. "Scholz and Schumacher have gotten word that there's a female spy in town, and guess where they are headed?"

She pulled open the drawers of the dresser and began to toss clothes and shoes into one of the suitcases. "How could they have found out?"

"Only God knows," said Benoit, who picked up her Enigma machine and carefully placed it into the other suitcase before snapping it shut. "Go to the brewery, I'll send someone there to bring you food and wine. Take one of the bicycles to get there. Do you have a weapon?"

She flashed the silver knife at him and he grimaced. "I wish I had a spare pistol to give you," he said. "I only have one."

"Keep it," she said, picking up a pair of trousers and slipping them on under her nightshirt. "I prefer to kill quietly. And I have a gun in the suitcase."

"There's a rifle in the brewery, hidden behind one of the grain tins. Bullets in the desk inside the office." He pressed a key into her hands and slapped a cap onto her head. "Let's go."

Madame Lebrun stood at the bottom of the stairs, a candle in her hand and looking absolutely livid in her robe. "You still owe me seventeen francs for the week," she said. Karolina reached into her jacket and threw her coin purse at the woman, who caught it in surprise.

"Take all of it," Karolina hissed as Benoit hurried her out the door. "Take it and get as far away from here as you can, the dice are on the table the night of the fourth."

"What the hell does that mean?" called Madame Lebrun, but she and Benoit were already out the door, headed to the shed in the backyard where he stored the bicycles. The glare of a flashlight illuminate the road out front, and they upped their pace.

He strapped the two suitcases together onto the back platform of his bike and wheeled it to the back lane. "You remember how to get to the brewery?"

"I do," she said. There were voices at the front of the house - German ones, and then the angry yell of Madame Lebrun as they burst into the house. Karolina wondered what would happen to Benoit after she left, and considered urging him to come with her, but another scream from Madame Lebrun stole his attention away, and she knew he would never leave his wife no matter how nasty she was to him.

"Then go, go now," Benoit said, and she mounted the bike and pedaled into the darkness. " _Bonne chance_!"

* * *

_31 May 1944_

Nixon was in regimental headquarters, delivering a box of files to be shipped to Upottery, when the Enigma receiver began to churn to life down the hallway.

"Christ," said Vest, jumping at the noise of the cranks, shaking his head. "I still haven't gotten used to that machine."

Nixon dropped the box on the man's desk and walked towards the machine's room, noticing that the door was shut tight. Mark hadn't expected any transmissions that day, then. He turned the doorknob, relieved to find it unlocked, and walked in to see the tape feed spiraling out of the machine. He picked up the fallen tape to read it but soon as he did, the machine started up again, whining in protest as it cranked out another message.

"Nix?" said Winters, who was standing in the doorway, a box full of files in his arms as well. "What's going on?"

"This thing is going crazy," he said, holding the tape up to the light. "Oh, Jesus Christ."

_GHOS TPRO TOCO LINV ISIB LEFL EDSM EGUE RILL AENG AGED_ , read the first one. Nixon handed it to Winters, who squinted at it.

"Ghost protocol invisible, fled SME, guerilla engaged?" he read. "Does this mean that the Germans found her out?"

"Shit," Nixon said. His hands had gone clammy and felt his stomach jump. "I don't know. Where's Mark?"

Winters leaned his head out the door. "Vest, call up Agent Longshore now, it's urgent."

"Yes, sir," Vest said from down the hall, and Nixon heard him dialing the rotary. He picked up the next line of feed and cursed. Winters grabbed it out of his hand as he walked towards the door and checked to see if Mark was on his way, but Vest had vacated his desk.

"Terminate contact, assume compromised, rendezvous overlord," Winters read, and he dropped the paper onto Mark's desk. "So she's going to stop sending messages altogether? What about the plan to sabotage the coastline, what can be done?"

Nixon ran a hand through his hair, thinking of the faces of a very livid Colonel Sink and a deadly angry Ron Speirs. "We go to Upottery and get the hell over to France as soon as we can."


	13. Saboteur

Chapter Thirteen

Saboteur

_Upottery, England; Sainte-Mère-Eglise, France_

_1-4 June 1944_

 

_1 June 1944_

Living in a brewery was not fantastic, but it was better than prison. So much better than prison, if she was being honest. But the brewery had its pitfalls. One was that it was infested with mice, and Karolina often awoke to the sound of high-pitched squeaking near her ears at night, and the mice always got to the food she was hoarding, even though she had tried all sorts of ways to rig the bundle of goods so the rodents couldn't reach it. But mice were very charming to watch - she liked their little pink ears and the way they sat up and nibbled at spare grains of wheat on the ground. She couldn't kill the tiny friends - they hadn't done anything wrong.

There was also an issue with the fact that the brewery's alcoholic fumes made her secondhand drunk, and even though she was an ace at drinking beer - hell, she was genetically built to drink  _only_ beer, if need be - being slightly tipsy all the time wasn't helpful when it came time to scope the fields outside the building for German patrols.

Scholz and company had figured out who she was, and according to Benoit, had put up wanted posters featuring her old mugshot from her time in the Wittlich State Prison in 1939, which was the least flattering photograph of her in existence. She looked maniacal, her face gone slack from days of electric shock torture, her hair a mess, but her eyes gleamed with a homicidal rage that radiated from the photo with frightening results. That picture had been in every German paper after she had escaped from Wittlich, and it made it easier to go unrecognized - people were looking for a soulless murderer on the run, not a well-dressed, composed woman about town. Benoit had brought her a copy of the poster, and she hung it on the wall in his office above the pallet she had repurposed into a bed.

The poster also changed things for the worse. She knew that the Abwehr would find her in France, and she guessed that she should be thankful that it took them nearly a month to discover her whereabouts, but now every German soldier was on high alert and knew she was in the area. That made spiking the anti-aircraft guns slightly more difficult. It also meant that she was forced to do night reconnaissance, admittedly an easier type of surveillance procedure, but the town was now crawling with German soldiers preparing to ward off the invading Allies. It was a figurative minefield - one day a platoon was over by Les Cruttes, the next they were in Ravenoville and two other platoons had popped up in their absence. She was beginning to become frustrated, and when she was frustrated she often became angry, and when she was angry she did very, very bad things.

It had only been two days since she had cut off contact with the men in England, but she deeply felt the loss of knowing that someone was listening, and that she wasn't just yelling out into the void. It was the first of June, and her stomach was in knots as she disassembled and cleaned Benoit's rifle, to which she added a scope that he had brought her along with the bread and cheese and wine he had filched from Madame Lebrun's pantry. He hadn't shown up today at noon, the normal hour he came to the brewery to turn over the hops and filter batches of beer, and she felt an instinctual worry that pushed away all other thoughts. If he had been snatched and taken away because of her, the guilt would eat her alive.

It was a quiet afternoon, and sometimes she heard the odd shout in German carried on the wind from the coast, which only made her jumpier. She wished she had something to read to while away the hours, but the only thing to read in the office was Benoit's account books and manuals on the art of brewing. She wiped off the barrel of the rifle and slid the pieces back together, pleased at the smooth gunmetal and pristine shine. She had always been good at cleaning.

On the first floor beneath her, a floorboard creaked, and she froze. She set down the rifle on the blanket on top of her pallet, and picked up her pistol on the desk, holding her breath. A second squeak, slightly higher in tone, confirmed her suspicions, and she tip-toed to the wall beside the door.

Scholz, unlike most soldiers, wasn't an idiot. He would have brought at least three other men with him, and he would have ordered them to stay silent while combing the building for traces of her. She readjusted her grip on the pistol and calculated the odds. The office was at the top of a set of stairs that were enclosed, the main door at the bottom leading to the factory floor. If they filed up the stairs, they would trap her in. If she got down to the bottom of the stairs, she would have to fight her way out. Neither were great options.

Another floorboard creaked, closer this time, and she thought she heard someone whisper. Her head whipped to the window above Benoit's desk, and she locked the door to the office, tucked the pistol into her belt and picked up the rifle. She loaded it with a round and slipped it onto her shoulder, making sure it was secure before she climbed onto Benoit's desk and shimmied the frame up until she could slip out. She climbed onto the steel roof and closed the window shut behind her.

Her blood was rushing through her ears and her heart was pounding but it felt so good, better than anything she had felt in the past two years, and her brain locked into a primal hunting mode where everything was hyper-focused, and she felt nearly invincible. The adrenaline of killing was far more intoxicating than the high she got from her blue pills. She crawled on her belly towards the front of the building, sliding soundlessly over the steel until she reached a gable in which she could set up her aim.

There was an open-top jeep in the road, and one man sat in the driver's seat, anxiously looking back and forth between the lane and the entrance to the building. She propped the muzzle of the rifle on the peak of the gable, looked down the scope at the man's chest, breathed in, held the breath for a second, and squeezed the trigger as she exhaled.

The shot echoed against the roof and the man collapsed in the driver's seat. Karolina pressed herself flat against the steel as alarmed shouts rang out from within the brewery. Now she would really have to be quick.

Two men ran outside towards the jeep, and then dropped to the ground once they realized that she was firing from an elevated area, and it only took a second for her to recognize Schumacher down the barrel of her gun before she fired and watched the shot go right through his head, red mist bursting into the air as Grann let out a scream of terror from below.

Someone was coming through the window, and Karolina turned just in time to see Scholz clambering over the roof towards her, his pistol in his hand and his teeth bared. Karolina swiveled the rifle and fired the same time he did, and his bullet ricocheted off the roof and pinged her in the shoulder. She grunted, but fired again, and this time her shot got him in the stomach. He collapsed down onto his knees, and she sent a swift kick in his direction - her foot collided with the bullet wound, and he toppled down the roof and fell onto the ground below, landing with a hard thud.

She turned her attention back to the road and saw that Grann was trying to dial the radio inside the jeep, shaking from fear. She took aim and fired, missing him but hitting the radio, which shattered immediately and took off Grann's right hand. Killing him felt like putting a wounded animal out of its misery, and his howls of pain were cut off by another bullet to the chest. Karolina popped the spent magazine out of the rifle and tossed it off the side of the roof, reloaded with the extra bullets in her belt, and waited, her eyes trained on the road.

She lay there for five minutes until she was satisfied that there was no one else in the building, and then she began her descent back into the window. She peered over the side of the roof and looked down at Scholz's crumpled body - there was no doubt he was dead, not with that puddle of blood leaking from underneath him - and she climbed through the now-open window back into Benoit's office. The desk was a mess, of course; everything had been swept onto the ground, and she dropped the rifle onto the pallet and grabbed the other gun from her belt. She slowly opened the door to the staircase, crept down it, and then peeked out the open door that led to the factory floor.

Everything was in pristine condition, the antithesis of the slaughter outside, and she was happy to see that none of Benoit's brews had been disturbed by the soldiers. She walked quickly across the floor, checking every nook and cranny as she went for someone lurking behind a sack of grain, and emerged out into the summer sunshine.

Grann was easy to get into the back of the jeep - one good push sent him head over heels into the vehicle, and she picked up his blown-apart hand with her thumb and forefinger and tossed it in after him, grimacing at the sight. Schumacher was heavier, and she ended up dragging him to the back of the jeep, panting all the way, and hoisting him up by the jacket into the back to rest on top of Grann.

"Move over," she said to the body of the driver, pushing him over into the passenger's seat. With one quick glance at the road, she started the ignition and drove to the side of the brewery where Scholz's body lay. By the time she had him secured in the back, she was sweating profusely and covered with sticky patches of blood, and she wiped her bloodied hands on her pants, thoroughly ruining the entire outfit. She had quite forgotten about her shoulder, but now it was stinging. She shimmied the top of her borrow shirt over her shoulder and frowned at the ripped flesh on the side of her arm. The bullet had grazed right through the flesh, and it would need stitches, but she had more pressing matters at hand.

She drove the jeep to the loading bay of the distillery, where she cranked open the tin door and parked the vehicle beside the concrete dock. She released the chain behind her and let the door fall shut, and then stood up and rubbed the muscle underneath her wounded shoulder, contemplating the pile of dead men that she had created in the last hour. In one of the closets by the back door she found a tarpaulin that covered the bodies and spread it over the back of the jeep. She stood back and admired her work. Not as sloppy as it had first appeared, in her opinion. Now all she had to worry about was someone coming to find them, but she found herself too tired to worry about that now.

Karolina locked the back door and the front door, climbed the stairs to Benoit's office, laid down and slipped into a heavy, dreamless nap.

* * *

Nixon sat by Winters in the pub at Upottery and watched Buck Compton play darts with the men. He could tell by the set of Dick's jaw that the man was upset with the new lieutenant - he had specifically fussed at Compton a few days before for gambling with the men, and Compton had clearly disregarded the reprimand.

"He seems immune to glares," Nixon commented, earning one of his own from Dick. "Hey, I'm just pointing it out."

Buck shook hands with the winner and passed over a pack of cigarettes with a solemn shake of his head. "You got me this time," Nixon heard him say over the ruckus of the pub. "But watch out!"

"I just think officers need to behave as officers," said Dick, annoyed. "The men won't consider him a leader if he keeps gambling with them."

Buck slapped Malarkey on the shoulder, and the redhead turned with a delighted grin and shook the tall blonde man's hand. "Ah, there's no harm in it yet," Nixon said. "When he really cuts up, then you can lay into him."

Dick grunted, unsatisfied, and Nixon patted him on the back. "I'm getting another drink," he said, standing up. "Want another soda?"

"Nah, I'm fine," Dick said, and Nixon pushed out his chair and ambled over to the bar, where Buck stood with Bill Guarnere, both of them cracking up over some dirty joke.

"Ah, Lieutenant Nixon," said Buck, giving him a grin. "I gotta ask you about something I heard the other day, I didn't know if Guarnere here was pulling my leg or not."

"I always tell the truth," said Bill, and Malarkey snorted behind him. Bill gave him a dry look before giving Buck a wink. "Well, a version of it."

"I am the intelligence officer," Nixon said, picking up his fresh glass of whiskey. "What did you hear?"

Buck leaned back and regarded the man with a twinkle in his eye. "I heard Easy Company has a German spy," he said, his voice teasing. "And that the spy is a  _she_."

"Her name is Karolina," Bill said, taking a gulp of his beer. "How many times I gotta tell ya?"

"Yeah, she was with us in Aldbourne, hell of an operative. And she is going to be accompanying us through Europe once we get to Normandy," Nixon said, watching Buck's face morph into disbelief. Nixon suddenly flashed back to when Sink had told him that Karolina was going to be joining their ranks, six months ago. Had it really been that long ago? "She's there right now, undercover."

"And she's German?" Buck said. "A true-blue, sauerkraut-eating German?"

Nixon rolled his eyes at the man's generalizations. "Yes, she was born in Hamburg and lived in Germany until four years ago."

"Holy moly," Buck said, shaking his head. "I thought Guarnere was lying. How did ex-Nazi spy weasel her way into the airborne?"

Guarnere choked on his beer and sat the glass down, suddenly stern. "Look, she ain't no Nazi, okay? Yeah, she worked for the Germans but she's... she ain't no Nazi."

Buck laughed until he caught sight of the serious look on Guarnere's face and then he stopped abruptly, his eyes flickering between Nixon and Guarnere. "I didn't mean to offend anyone..."

"Nah, that's okay," Malarkey said from behind Guarnere's shoulder. "We all thought the same thing when she first got to Aldbourne, but we're pretty sure the Nazis killed her whole family, and then she escaped to England and signed up with the OSS."

"No, you dolt," said Luz, walking up and setting his empty glass on the bar and fiddling with the jump wings on his jacket. "She was working with the Abwehr, and then she tried to escape with her brother, and then the powers-at-be killed her brother and threw her into jail, and then she escaped jail by murdering everyone in there."

"Oh yeah, that's right," said Guarnere, shrugging. "Hard to keep it all straight, ya know?"

Buck looked horrified. "And her name is Karolina?"

"If you call her that to her face, she'll probably punch you," said Malarkey with a grin.

"The gal likes to fight, and she'll start 'em, too" said Luz. "She took down Speirs."

"Lieutenant Speirs?" said Buck, overwhelmed by all this information. "The scary one from Dog? No way."

"Yeah, on the second day here," Guarnere said. "He wanted to fight her, and she agreed, and she took him down to the ground, but then she talked some shit in German and he punched her in the face. But afterward they seemed to get along alright."

Buck blinked, but then smiled in an uncertain way. "You guys have got to be kidding me," he said, hands held out to stop them. "There's no way..."

"God's truth," Luz said, putting a hand over his heart. "Ain't that right, Lieutenant Nixon?"

Nixon sighed. "I have no idea how any of you got that information," he said. "But I wouldn't go around repeating it."

"Repeating what?" said the voice of Ron Speirs, and Nixon turned to see the man leaning against the bar as if he had been there the whole time. Buck blanched a little and nodded at the man before taking a big sip of beer and escaping into the crowd around the bar, and Malarkey, Luz, and Guarnere quickly followed him. Knowing Ron, he had probably been there the entire time, just lurking out of sight, waiting for the right moment to scare them away.

"Gossip," Nixon said, taking a good look at the man. Speirs looked grumpier than usual and had dark circles under his eyes. "How are you doing?"

Ron knocked back his drink and sat down the empty glass. "When do we jump?" he asked, ignoring any gateway into personal conversation, as always.

 _Straight to the point, then._ "They haven't told us yet," he said, and Ron gave him a searing look. "If they had, I would have told the officers by now."

"What does Karolina say?" Speirs asked, and Nixon turned away and looked into his glass of whiskey. He had walked right into that trap, and he had been avoiding the topic so well as of late. He did his best to steel himself and gave Ron a calm look.

"I don't know," Nixon said. "We haven't heard from her."

There was a moment of silence between them as the bar rollicked around them, and then Ron abandoned his glass on the bar and leaned over Nixon, his face twisted into a menacing look. "Excuse me?" he said quietly. Nixon fought down the instinct to take a step back.

"She's terminated communication with us," he said, his mouth dry. "For her safety. She's guerilla fighting."

Ron reached out and clasped Nixon on the shoulder and steered him towards the exit, not giving the man a chance to protest. Dick caught Nixon's eye as he was swept out of the door, and Nixon mouthed  _HELP ME_ before he was taken out into the night by a madman.

Ron ran a hand through his hair and then squared off with Nixon, his entire body radiating barely-contained fury. "You are going to tell me everything," he said, his hand itching towards his pocket, and Nixon gave in to his instincts and took a step back. "Right  _now_."

Nixon put his hands up. "She sent two messages on the thirty-first," he said in a placating voice. "The first said 'Ghost protocol invisible, fled SME, guerilla engaged'. We took that to mean that she had been found out and had gone into the countryside to do some guerilla tactics, most likely with the  _Maquis_  group she found." Ron exhaled loudly and hit his fist against his thigh. "The second one was more concerning, it said 'Terminate contact, assume compromised, rendezvous overlord', which we interpreted as her cutting off communication between us for the sake of her safety and ours, and that she'll find us when we land."

Speirs took a step forward and got into Nixon's face. "You didn't think I needed to know any of this?"

Nixon had about had it with the man's antics. "No, I didn't," he said, pushing Speirs back with a finger to the chest. "Because I knew that you would react like this."

"We don't know where she is, if she's dead or alive, if she's been captured," Speirs said. "How else am I supposed to react?"

"Like an adult!" Nixon snapped, entirely fed up. "Because she is also an adult, and a grown woman, and can take care of herself better than you and I ever could."

Speirs looked as if he was seriously considering hitting Nixon, but then the door to the pub opened and Winters stepped out, squinting into the darkness at the two men. "Nix? Ron? Everything okay?"

"Yes," Speirs spat, glaring down at Nixon. "Just dandy." He turned on his heel and stalked off towards the tents by the airfield where the men slept. Nixon turned and shook his head at Dick and sighed.

"That went well," Dick said, letting the door to the bar close behind him. "At least he didn't hit you."

"Remind me to bring a pair of brass knuckles with me the next time I give that man bad news," Nixon said, and Dick patted him on the back.

* * *

_3 June 1944_

Karolina had just eaten the last slice of her bread when Benoit showed up for the first time in two days, sporting a fat lip and a black eye. When she opened the door downstairs to let him in, she discovered that he had brought company with him - eleven people, in fact, all ranging in age and nationality, by the looks of it. Each sported a Basque beret and gave her a suspicious once-over as they filed into the brewery. Karolina, however, was delighted. Eleven people meant eleven other cannons she didn't have to worry about.

"I am happy to see you," she said to Benoit, and he kissed her hand. "I was afraid they had taken you."

"They did take me," he said, checking the internal temperature of one of his kettles on the brewing floor. "But they let me go yesterday. Apparently, four of their intelligence officers didn't show up for duty in the afternoon." He gave her a knowing look. "I assume they found you?"

"Yes," Karolina said, beckoning the group to the loading bay. "But unfortunately, I found them, as well. I would advise you to cover your nose."

The stench of the four dead men in the June heat had begun to leak throughout the building, and when she unlocked the door to the loading bay it smelled as if she had cracked open a freshly sealed tomb. One of the women gagged and Karolina raised an eyebrow over the rag she held to her face. "I told you to cover your face!"

"I didn't believe you," coughed the woman, holding her shirt sleeve to her nose as she followed Karolina into the garage. The rest of the group trailed behind her, and Karolina walked down the steps to the back of the jeep and flung back the tarpaulin.

Things had gotten messier since she had killed the men from the rooftop. Their blood had leaked out of the jeep and pooled into a sickeningly sticky puddle on the ground beside the vehicle. Scholz and company had also lost most of their physical charm - it had been so hot inside the brewery that the bodies had bloated before their time, and the faces of the men had a dark hollowness to them that signaled a need to get them in the ground as quickly as possible. Benoit walked over and waved away the flies. "Schumacher, Scholz, Grann, and another one I don't recognize," he said, raising an eyebrow. "From where?"

"The rooftop, using your M1," she said, covering the bodies and waving the crowd of people back into the brewery. "We can burn them later. I would like to meet your friends."

The men and women of Benoit's  _Maquis_ group all lived around Sainte-Mère-Eglise aand all had a biting hatred of Germans, which they made apparent to Karolina as Benoit introduced her by her real name; they sent her looks of disbelief and dismissal, but a few must have recognized her from the poster, and they seemed slightly impressed. Karolina rolled her eyes and unfurled the map Benoit had brought her of the Normandy coastline. She watched as each operative marked a red cross near Sainte-Mère-Eglise where they had staked out the location of individual guns.

"The plan is to spike all of the anti-aircraft guns with grenades," she said, picking up an American grenade from the crate one of the women had brought in. "Ideally, we would use sticky bombs, but we did not receive any. Fifteen guns, fifteen grenades, thirteen people - two of us will have to do two guns, and I will go ahead and volunteer myself for that."

"I can do it," said a young woman with her hair in a yellow braid. Karolina nodded at her and picked up the grenade again, sending a brief prayer of thanks to the British air drops that supplied them with such marvelous weaponry.

"Simple idea," she said. "We are not going to pull the pins on the grenades - we are going to drop them into the barrel of the guns. When the Germans fire the guns for the first time, they will explode, take out the gun and whatever Germans are standing around it."

"What if they fire the guns before the Invasion?" asked Benoit.

"Then it will explode, and that's fine," she said. "It will still be disabled, and I am betting that after we dynamite the railroads and cut the telephone lines tonight, they will not have the abilities to get new guns in such a short amount of time. The only problem will be that they will know the guns have been sabotaged, and they might try to withdraw the grenades."

The group nodded in approval, and she stood up. "To make this even more effective, we are going to sprinkle gunpowder into the barrels after the grenades." She nodded to the paper cartridges in another crate. "Word of warning: do not get shot if you have this on your person. You will go up like a firework."

"We have contacted your friends in the other cities," said the woman with the blonde braid. "They have gone into hiding as well, and other Maquis groups will rendezvous with them tonight."

"Are all of them secure?" Karolina asked, thinking about Ella, and was relieved when the blonde woman nodded. "Good. We move at 23:00. We will take shifts watching the road."

The  _Maquis_  members turned and chatted amongst themselves and stocked up on grenades from the open crate. "May I speak to you, my dear?" said Benoit at her elbow, and he led her over to the bin where he stored fresh wheat. He reached into the bag he carried on his arm and pulled out a beret and Welrod pistol. "For you."

She picked up the beret and turned it in her hands. "I do not think I deserve this," she said, glancing at the men and women who were studying the maps. "I would not want to insult anyone by wearing it. I am not a part of the  _Maquis_."

"It would insult them if you didn't wear it," Benoit said, plucking it out of her hands and pulling it down on her head at a cocked angle. "There, perfect. And, a gift for you for helping us rid ourselves of the German scum." He handed over the silencing pistol and she ran a hand down it's extended barrel, admiring its design.

"I have never fired one of these before," she said with a smile. "Who does this belong to?"

"It was Jeanne Marie's," said the woman with the blonde braid, walking up to join them. "She was executed in Paris last year for aiding the Resistance. There are only a thousand or so Welrods out in the world - we thought you would put it to the best use."

Karolina held the pistol up to the light and gave the woman a smile. "Every shot I fire, I will remember her name," she said, turning to the group, who had stopped to watch the conversation. "It's time to cleanse France of its pain."

* * *

The plan was this: the  _Maquis_  members, Benoit, and Karolina would operate in waves. The first wave was to go at 23:00 hours to spike the guns at the coastline.

"Try not to cause a gunfight," Karolina muttered as they all streaked their faces with black grease. "But if you want to kill, do it silently."

After each member of the Maquis had taken care of their assigned gun, they would rendezvous at Cibrantot in one of Benoit's wheat fields and lay timed dynamite on the railroad track every quarter of a mile until they reached Audouville-la-Hubert, where the track turned towards the coastline. Then, as silently as possible, they would cut the telephone lines on their way back to Foucarville, disabling the German link to Sainte-Mère-Eglise and from the world at large. If everything went according to plan, they would have severely impacted the Germans' ability to defend the coastline in the span of three hours.

Karolina was supposed to take the two guns nearest Les Cruttes and meet Benoit at Cibrantot to lay the first round of dynamite, and as they slipped into the neighboring fields around the brewery and disappeared into the night, she felt a thrill run up her spine at the thought of being alone in the darkness.

It was strange, she had been so frightened of the dark as a child, had often slept with Philippe in his bed when she woke up from night terrors and no one came to comfort her. That had lasted well into her years working in Berlin, and it had stopped when she walked from Wittlich into Luxembourg after she had broken out of prison. She remembered she had been exhausted and nursing a broken wrist, had been beaten the previous day and the muscles of her abdominal muscles were sore from being kicked, but something in the cool night air had soothed her, and she had listened to the trees whisper to one another and thought for a moment that she understood their language. She had a knife and a pistol and wore a striped prison smock and stolen boots and the darkness had surrounded her and pulled her in, and she felt as if she had become one with the ground under her feet, and she was no longer afraid.

And now she stalked towards the coastline, in tune with every noise around her, listening past the summertime crickets and frogs for the unusual and the unnatural, and smiled to herself as she crept deeper into the woods above Foucarville. There wasn't anything to be afraid of, she reasoned, because she was the deadliest thing in the dark of the forest.

She had been walking for half an hour when she hit the first sign of German troops, and she dropped to a knee behind a wall of bushes and observed the road in front of her. A few men were sitting around a fire, drinking out of flasks and chatting quietly, totally unaware of her presence across the road, and she retraced her steps until she was out of the bushes and crouching down low.  _To the right, then._

The first gun was near the brick cafe facing the ocean - Karolina had caught a glimpse of it with Benoit on that afternoon when they rode their bicycles out into the country. That felt as if it had been years ago, not two weeks, and she kept an eye peeled for the building as she cross the dirt road, far out of sight of the men by the fire.

A few minutes more towards the coast and she saw the brick cafe filled with German men, all of them smoking and drinking wine, and she skirted around the back of the building and peered over the wooden fence. All she saw was a patch of cabbages and a fat orange cat watching her curiously. She smiled at it before ducking down and continuing around the back of the building, entering a patch of cattails that came up to her waist. She crouched down into a squat and inched her way forward.

The gun was massive, mounted on a moveable dolly and protected by two nervous-looking soldiers who stood next to the artillery and spoke quietly to each other.

" _The Americans have 500,000 men,"_ said the private on the left to the private on the right.  _"They're all from prisons, too. Condemned murderers."_

Herr Right snorted. " _We have our own local murderer to worry about,"_ he said, and Karolina slowly drew her silver knife from her belt.

 _"That bitch looks insane,"_ said Herr Left.  _"I've never heard of her before."_

 _"You're too young to remember,"_ said Herr Right. " _But she killed all the guards in Wittlich prison and then escaped the country - by herself."_

" _Shit, one woman couldn't do all of that alone,"_ replied Herr Left. " _She'd have to have some kind of help. I bet the government is covering it up."_

 _"Keep theorizing while I go take a piss,"_ said Herr Right, and he turned and stomped off into the darkness towards the cafe, and Karolina extended her arm as she rose up out of the cattails, took aim at Herr Left's head, and threw the silver dagger with all her might. She ducked down and waited, hoping she didn't throw her most prized possession off the dune and onto the beach below, and her stomach turned as she heard the soldier sigh and walk back towards her. She gripped the handle of her new pistol and bit her lip. It would have to be the hard way, then.

The man turned and looked back towards the ocean, dug around in his pocket and produced a cigarette. Karolina rose up from the weeds and aimed the pistol at the man's chest, betting high that the silencer on the weapon actually worked. " _Entschuldigung!"_ she called in a soft, feminine voice, and the man turned around, surprise written on his face. She pulled the trigger before he had time to reach for his own gun.

The bullet exploded from the barrel with a  _pop!_ , not unlike the sound of a uncorking a champagne bottle, and the man fell to the ground, clutching his throat and gasping for air behind the sounds of sickening gurgles. Karolina raised an eyebrow and put the gun back in its holder on her belt before striding over to the man and watching the life fade from his eyes as his hands flailed around his throat.

" _Tschüss!"_ she said, giving him a little sneer before she kicked him into the cattails. She waited a moment to make sure that his friend wasn't coming back anytime soon before she jogged to the front of the gun.

Luckily for her, the barrel had been cranked down and was pointing out towards the ocean. She unhooked a grenade from her jacket and pushed it into the mouth of the barrel, listening to the metal grate against the inside of the gun before coming to a stop. She dug into her pocket, found one of the packets of gunpowder, and tossed it inside before she ran back to dead man and dragged him by his boots deeper into the underbrush.

_Five down, a couple hundred thousand to go._

* * *

_4 June 1944_

"No jump tonight!" Meehan hollered from atop a parked jeep, and Ron groaned alongside the other men, livid that he had spent the day with his stomach in knots for nothing. He wiped his hand across his forehead before remembering that it was smeared with grease, and he scraped the black goo off of his hands before taking off his helmet. He needed to find Nixon.

Was he still livid with the man from keeping Karolina's status in France a secret from him? Absolutely. Did he recognize the fact that his response was foolish and that he had no right to know that information? Regrettably, yes. Did that mean he was going to apologize to Nixon when he found him, and politely ask for more information? Unfortunately, he had to, or else he would steal a C-47 and try to invade Normandy all by himself.

The thing was, he was going a little crazy. He didn't really understand why, though he had finally admitted to himself that it all spanned from the fact that he could no longer keep track of Karolina Shütze, and that Karolina herself now starred in his dreams as a Shiva-like figure of warfare, standing above a pile of dead Nazis with a glowing aura around her head. Like Joan of Arc, but better. Joan of Arc with a sniper rifle and a wicked smile.

He also knew that Karolina Shütze didn't give two flying fucks about him and didn't think of him like that and that he was being a creep, but he would figure out how to deal with those dreams once he blasted his way into Normandy and found her alive and in one piece. But right now, he needed to find Nixon and figure out the right words to say that would make the man give him what he wanted.

It only took a few rounds of walking through the ocean of tents before he spied Buck Compton and Nixon walking down a row, heads together as they looked over a map of Utah beach. Ron quickened his pace and peered over Nixon's shoulder at the map, and Buck caught sight of him from his peripheral and jumped in surprise.

"Jesus, Ron," said Nixon, starting from Buck's response and glaring at the man. "Could ya give a guy a head's up?"

"Sorry," Ron said tersely, nodding at Buck in greeting, who looked at him warily. "Wanted to speak with you, Nixon."

The intelligence officer gave him a sardonic look from under his helmet. "What, no kidnapping this time?"

"No, and I'd like to formally apologize for my behavior the other night." It sounded formal and right if not a little mechanical in its delivery, and Nixon stopped, waiting for him to keep talking. "It was uncalled for an I understand now that you had done the right thing in accordance with your status as an intelligence officer."

Buck glanced between the two men and coughed, then slapped Nixon on the shoulder. "I'll catch up with you later," he said. "I have to go repack my chute." He gave Ron a perplexed if not amused look and walked off in the other direction.

Nixon sighed and watched the other man go before turning to Ron. "If you ever try to rough me up like that again, I'll kick your ass," he said, jabbing a finger into Ron's jump gear.

"I'd like to see you try, but duly noted," Ron replied.

Nixon smacked the map against his leg and rolled his eyes. "I know you didn't come here to apologize," he said. "What do you want?"

Ron opened his mouth, but Nixon cut him off. "We're probably jumping tomorrow night, the Maquis and the operatives are on stand-by, I've heard from the British SOE radiomen that everyone is accounted for..."

"Everyone being who?" Ron said, and Nixon waved at him to follow as he walked down the row of tents.

"All the operatives sent over by the OSS, plus Karolina," Nixon said, giving him a look that Ron ignored. "They've been doing some light sabotage in the area - the normal stuff, blowing up railroads, cutting telephone wires, spiking the guns - and they're just waiting for the code words to be said over the radio to unleash hell."

Some of the tension in Ron's stomach dissolved. "What is their plan for the Invasion?"

"Not too sure," Nixon said, stopping at his tent and holding the flap open for Ron to enter. Inside was a desk laden down with maps and letters of all kinds and a massive crate of Vat 69, and Nixon took a seat at the table. "But word is that they're all veritably pissed.  _Maquis_  intelligence said that they've already started eliminating Germans from the towns and picking off people from the platoons stationed off the coastline. A full-out fire fight has already erupted in Caen, and fifty bucks says that Katya Medvedeva has something to do with that."

"And Karolina?" he said, hating the fact that he needed to know. Nixon shrugged.

"The Germans in town discovered her identity at the end of May, put up a bunch of wanted posters everywhere, and she's been hiding out somewhere near the coast," he said. "She's joined a  _Maquis_  group, I think."

"Good," Ron said, standing up, the roaring in the back of his brain subdued. "Sounds fun."

" _Fun?"_ Nixon echoed, but Ron had already strode out of the tent.


	14. The Longest Night

Chapter Fourteen

The Longest Night

_Normandy, France_

_5-6 June 1944_

 

_5 June 1944_

_"The long sobs of the violins of autumn, wound my heart with a monotonous languor..."_

Karolina and the group of Maquis fighters had been waiting an hour for those words to be said, listening to fluctuating static before the opening drums of Radio Londres announced the 'personal messages', the nonsensical strings of code words that announced different meanings to different people. But those lines, taken from a poem, were a signal to all covert groups on the Normandy coastline that the Invasion was imminent, and that they were to spread out along the countryside and attack as many enemy soldiers as possible.

Benoit looked up from where he was crouched by the radio's dial and gave the group an intense stare. "It's time," he said, a smile breaking over his face. "It's happening. It's finally happening." And then everyone was moving, scrambling to pick up their things, jittery and ready to fulfil their duties.

Karolina picked up her new M1 and tightened the belt around her waist as Benoit gave out orders. "Henri, go to the first line of dynamite and set off the reaction. Jeannette, take Pauline and the two of you dismantle the repairs the Germans made to the main power grid. The rest of you, attack your assigned platoons. Karolina?"

She looked up to find the entire group staring at her, taking in her stolen black men's shirt and the pants she had dyed black out of necessity, her weapons belt, the beret firmly pulled down on her head, and she paused as Benoit stuck out a hand. She met the older man's palm with her own and marveled at his grip. She hoped that she would see him again, but the chances were low. He had done so much for her, and he didn't really know her at all.

"Thank you," he said. "For helping France, for helping us." He dropped her hand and picked up his flask from the tabletop. "To the only good German -  _vive la France_!"

" _Vive la France_ ," she said with the others, her hands shaking, feeling twitchy as the medicine kicked in. She had taken two pills instead of the one, and she felt as if her heart was going to break her breastbone it was pounding so hard. Benoit kept giving her strange looks, as if he could tell something was a little off, as if he knew. Perhaps he did know - if he did, he certainly wasn't complaining.

They filed out into the night, and Karolina checked her wristwatch as Benoit shut and locked the door to the brewery behind her.  _23:00._ The drops would begin at midnight. She had an hour to cause as much chaos and disorder as possible. A buzz sounded low and dull in her ears, her head was cloudy, but she saw everything so clearly through the dark, like a cat. The fatigue she had felt earlier was gone and she cracked her neck, ready for the task at hand.

"Good luck," Benoit whispered, and she turned left and headed towards Ravenoville-Plage, listening to the rustle of the grass on the side of the road as the wind whipped past her.  _Start at the end of Utah Beach, work your way up._ She glanced towards the sky, convinced that she already heard the mass drone of airplane engines, or perhaps it was only her head.

* * *

Ron hadn't taken his Dramamine.

Instead, he had mimed tossing it back into his mouth and had shoved it in his jacket pocket when no one was watching. He had experience with the stuff back in Boston, when he used to go sailing with some friends from high school, and it made him sick to his stomach. He knew he had made the right decision now, watching the men in his plane clutch their stomachs and loll their heads backwards. Others looked completely out of it, their eyes gone slightly dim and crossed. He needed all his wits about him for this drop.

The man across the aisle from him - Dodd? Aster?  _Too hard to see in the dark, the grease distorting everyone's face -_ fiddled with the rosary dangling from his hand, his fingers rolling the beads, his mouth muttering prayers. Most men needed to put faith into a higher being in order to feel confident. His faith was firmly in the corner of the OSS, Karolina Shütze, and a couple hundred pissed-off Frenchmen itching for a fight. He would always bet on the side seeking revenge. He just hoped the French wouldn't shoot him in the dark.

He sat near the open door and watched as the grey clouds formed a wall of mist in the air, his ears trained for the sound of distant explosions. He knew there was no way that the plane would escape the Invasion unscathed, knew that some of the men would be shot in mid-air as they floated downward towards German guns. The best-case scenario would be that at least two-thirds of the men made it to the ground and to the rendezvous point. The worst-case scenario was that the plane would be shot out of the air and go down in a fiery inferno of screams and pain.  _Pleasant to think about._

Before he had climbed into the plane a few hours ago, he had caught up with Winters and Nixon, and the three of them had gone over the map of Normandy one last time. "We're supposed to land about a kilometer west of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont," Nixon had said, tapping the tiny red dot on the map. "Then, reconvene in Foucarville and get to work destroying those cannon garrisons."

Ron had shifted, hating how the idiotic leg bag weighed him down. "Let's hope those cannons on the coast were successfully taken out," he said, running a finger along the width of Utah beach. "Or we aren't getting to Foucarville."

Foucarville was the place where Karolina had been hiding. He wondered briefly about the other OSS operatives, how they were faring - Medvedeva had started a coup, he knew that for sure. Abruzza had poisoned an entire platoon of Germans and then some in Bayeux, according to Nixon's last intelligence report before they climbed into the plane. He assumed they would meet up with the men at Foucarville as well. What a jolly little reunion that would be.

The cloud wall outside of the airplane cleared, and for the first time he could see the mass of C-47's all around them. He inched to the door and looked down - beneath them, an entire fleet of men were sailing towards France, ready to take back the coastline, hundreds of ships of all sizes stretching in every direction. The moon shone on the sea, illuminating the miniscule waves, and Ron sat back, fighting off the vertigo. Off to the right, a burst of lightning illuminated a cloud bank, and another struck in quick succession.  _No, not lightning..._

"Artillery!" said Dodd/Aster, looking out the doorway, the rosary forgotten in his hand. The men in the airplane shifted upright as the first sounds of explosions began to filter past the noise of the engines, and Ron gripped the butt of his rifle, grimacing at the flashes of light in the sky. This was the part that he had been dreading - he could control what he did on his own, he could mostly control the actions of each man in Dog Company by intimidation, but he couldn't control the airplane, and he couldn't control whether he would be shot on his way down to earth.

Another immersion inside an ocean of clouds and then the airplane broke free, and as soon as it did, flack began to pepper the underside of the wings, bouncing off with pings that made each man flinch and shy away from the sides of the plane. They were still above water - Ron could see the glint of the waves below them, and he held on tight to the ropes lining the benches, staring intently at the jump light near the door.

_Red,_ he willed silently.  _And then green, soon._

* * *

Twelve hundred feet below, Karolina crept up behind a lone German soldier, slapped a hand over his mouth, and slit his throat. He fell to his knees with a shocked whine, and she dragged him backwards into the covering trees. She hated the sensation of cutting a man's throat, it felt like slicing into a thick steak, but it was the most efficient way to take down enemies if one was attempting to be stealthy.  _Stealthy stealthy stealthy stealthy_ , chanted her brain, and she shook her head, hard.

She had forgotten how many people she had killed but based on the amount of blood on her hands and splattered over her pants and shirt, she could guess at least ten by her own hand. It was hard to keep track, and the guns were taking out a lot of Germans for her as they exploded into wide-reaching fireballs, immolating the men unfortunate enough to be standing by them. Most of the coastline she had covered was smoking from the bombed artillery, and the other bits were going straight to hell thanks to the  _Maquis_  and the Free French that had arrived from Paris as a welcome surprise. It had been an hour since she had left Foucarville, and as she knelt by the freshly dead German in the darkness, she heard the distinctive hum of hundreds of planes and the German guns firing in response, followed by the dull blast of distant explosions.

She was shaking, whether from the adrenaline or the pills or both, she didn't know. She wiped the sweat off her brow and pulled away her hand when she felt the clamminess of her skin. Something wasn't quite right, something was, it was not,  _not a good idea, one a day, she had never taken two before..._  She felt dizzy and cursed herself for the self-sabotage, she knew better than to take more than one, but she had done it, nervous about her own abilities, unwilling to put her guard down for the slightest millisecond in the field. She reached for the canteen on her belt and took a swig of water, practiced inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly, trying to reduce her heart rate and steady her vision.

A functioning German gun sounded off down the road and she squinted her eyes in its direction, catching the flash of the tracers as it fired. That would not do, not one bit. She poked her head out of the bushes, looked both ways down the road, and then crawled out, grabbing the strap of her M1 rifle as she focused on walking on the balls of her feet.

Halfway down the road, she heard a fluttering sound from above, and looked up in confusion before recognizing the underside of an open parachute and a man swiftly falling towards her. She ducked into the hedgerow and watched as he landed gracelessly on his ass, swearing the entire time. This has not escaped the notice of the Germans down the road, however, and Karolina heard the whizzing of bullets fired their way as the man flattened himself on the ground and crawled in her direction.

Before she could tell her instincts  _no_ , she slid out of the bushes and offered an outstretched arm to the man, who gave her a bewildered look before reaching out and taking her hand, and she dragged him into the hedgerow with her. He started when she crouched down beside him, his hand grabbing for a gun that wasn't there, but she put her finger up to her lips and pressed herself flat to the ground when she heard footsteps.

A pair of German scouts jogged past them, clearly searching for the man they had just seen fall from the sky, and they kicked at his abandoned parachute for a moment before giving up the search and running back to their stations. Karolina turned to look at the paratrooper, who was eyeing her beret and her outfit, and he pressed his helmet to his head.

"Parlay view..." he attempted, and then coughed, his throat raw.

"Welcome to France," she whispered in English. He screwed up his face as he recognized his own native language. "Where were you supposed to land? And what company are you in?"

"I'm with the 82nd," he said. "Where am I?"

"Petite Hameau," she said, grabbing the paper map from the pocket of her pants and tilting it until she could see in the moonlight. The German gun went off again, and she looked towards it with a livid expression as the man flinched. "I must take care of that. Where is your map?"

"Here," he said, reaching around for his pack and pulling out a worn cloth map. He held it to the same patch of moonlight and swore. "I'm a whole fucking fifteen kilometers off my lading point."

"Go south to Foucarville," Karolina said, tracing the path with a finger. "It is the rendezvous of the 101st 506th, you will be able to find your way from there."

"Thanks," the man said, giving her another perplexed look. "Who are you?"

"Karolina," she said, patting him on the shoulder before drawing her Welrod and walking back into the road. He said something else, but she was already stalking towards that infernal gun.

She could hear machine guns now, firing off in the fields as the men fought each other on equal grounds, and she used the noise to cover her footsteps as she ran towards the gun, ducking behind trees and bushes and melting into shadows when she saw the dark outline of another person ahead of her on the road, friend or foe, she wasn't sure. With a few more yards, she was able to see the gun itself - it was manned by four soldiers, each looking frantic as they scrambled for more ordinance to shoot down the paratroopers and their airplanes. Karolina checked the number of bullets in her Welrod, aimed at the principal gunner, and fired. He dropped down with a yell, and the three other men turned in her direction, grabbed their pistols, and began to shoot wildly into the dark.

She didn't feel the first bullet go into her arm, but she certainly felt the second one hit her side, and she aimed and fired at one of the men and watched him go down with a groan. The two other men were making their way towards her when one was felled by a shot that was not her own.

She turned and saw the paratrooper from before crouch down and walk towards her quickly, and she fired at the last German soldier but missed entirely, the bullet ricocheting off the metal of the gun's base. The paratrooper leapt up, sighted the man through his scope, and shot him down before he could yell for help.

Karolina looked up at the man, who gave her a shrug before moving forward towards the gun. "I thought you could use some help," he said, and she followed him into the clearing quietly, her hand clutched to her side. The spaces between her fingers were already wet with blood, but she found the strength to drop a live grenade into the barrel of the anti-aircraft gun and scurry away with the help of the paratrooper before it burst into flame.

"I'm Davidson," he said, and they shook hands. "Nice to meet'cha." He stared at her side, where the bullet had ripped through the fabric of her shirt. "Need a hand cleaning that up?"

* * *

Don Malarkey began to realize how stupid it was to sign up to jump out of a perfectly good plane.

Winters stood up at the front of the plane as the red light came on, and Don grabbed his carabiner, ready to get the hell out of there even though his instincts were screaming at him to stay on the plane. A burst of flack hit the side of the plane, and he heard one of the men yelp, and then everything went sideways as the pilots titled the aircraft out of the way of oncoming fire.

He fell on the bench and grabbed at the ropes on the wall, watched as Skip scrambled up in front of him - he turned to help Don up, and Malarkey grabbed his hand gratefully. The plane was accelerating, and Winters was looking out of the door with a vacant expression of horror and concern etched on his face. That couldn't be good.

"We get any lower, we ain't gonna need any freaking parachute!" Skip hollered out, and Winters broke his reverie and looked towards them, acknowledging Skip's point.

A shattering of glass sounded from the front of the plane, and in the darkness the red light turned green. The stick of men were moving forward rapidly, everyone eager to get out of the metal deathtrap, and though Malarkey was the twelfth man in the row he soon found himself near the front of the plane. Malarkey was a few feet from the door when he saw a plane on their right burst into flames, and he could swear that over the racket of the engine and the exploding ordinance and the sound of flack hitting metal, he could hear the poor bastards inside screaming as they went down in a fiery arc.

He didn't hesitate, though - as soon as Skip jumped out of the doorway he propelled himself into the air, grabbing onto the risers of his parachute as it deployed, and with a great heft upwards, the silk caught the wind and the leg bag snapped off. He rose back up into the air, fifty pounds lighter, and took in the tracers crossing the sky and the wreckage below him. He tried to steer clear of any trees or ponds, praying he didn't get hit while he was still in the air.

Malarkey didn't think of what losing all of his gear would mean for his personal safety until he hit the ground, landing inside some poor farmer's wheat field and realizing that all he had on him was a pistol and a few grenades. His hands went down to his leg and found the snapped cord where his bag had torn away from him, and he groaned as he unclipped himself from his parachute and ditched the yellow harness. He flattened his body to the ground and stole a glance around the field, not seeing a damn soul. This sure as hell wasn't the drop zone, then.  _Where was he?_

He still had the pack on his back though and thank Christ he had decided to put his map there and not in the leg bag. He drew his pistol and crouched low as he made his way across the field, intent on seeking cover in the trees a few yards away - suddenly, a machine gun began to fire at him from the not-so-safe hedgerow, and he turned and ran in the opposite direction, weaving around stumps and pieces of metal that littered the field, praying that he wouldn't trip.

_Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck_. He was almost to the edge of the trees that separated his field from the next when he ran straight into someone who was kneeling on the ground, and he went ass over teakettle into a creek. The person swore - in English, thank God - and crawled over to where he lay, and through the haze of burning planes and the flashes of tracers, Malarkey recognized the furious face of Bill Guarnere.

"Flash," Malarkey said weakly, rising up on his elbows out of the stagnant water. Bill shook his head and gave him a hand up, and the two of them hid behind a row of bushes as Malarkey wiped the mud from his uniform.

"Thunder, ya stupid idiot mick," Guarnere said, his eyes flickering between the machine gunner and Malarkey's face. "Ya alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, patting Guarnere on the shoulder. "How about you?"

"Lost my fucking leg bag in the drop, but I got my M1," he said, readjusting his grip on the rifle. "Where the fuck are we?"

"No clue, but I have a map," Malarkey said, feeling around for the back of his pack. "You didn't see any recognizable landmarks, did you?"

"No, I saw fucking Krauts shooting at me and a bunch of trees," Bill griped, helping him get the map from his pack and squinting into the field. "Shit, you got a raincoat?"

"No," Malarkey said, and Bill cursed again. "I can try to use moonlight."

They were still bickering under their breath when the sound of someone walking through the underbrush came from the right, and the two of them whirled around, guns pointed towards the shadow of a person across the creek.

"Flash," Bill whispered, raising his rifle to his eye. Malarkey steadied the hand around his pistol, his heart beating double-time.

"Flash?" said the voice. A woman's voice, actually, and Malarkey's ears recognized the pitch and tone. The shadow shifted, and then it gave a derisive snort, as if it couldn't believe the choice of the code word. "Oh, Thunder. Yes. Thunder." The person leapt across the creek and steadied themselves on a tree trunk with a sound of pain before coming closer, and there was Karolina, smiling her little smile, her face smeared with blood.

"You have gotta be fucking kidding me," Bill said, lowering his rifle and grabbing her by the arm, but she winced, and he let go immediately. "Kid, I can't believe it's you! What're you doing out here?"

She crouched down beside them, looking them over with a glazed-over expression, and Malarkey took in the beret on her head and the blood splatter on her neck - it didn't escape him that she was favoring her left side, either, and when he went to inspect the ripped side of her shirt, she caught his hand.

"Do not touch," she said, her voice sounding more foreign than it ever had in England. "I am fine. I fixed it up."

"You fixed what, exactly?" said Guarnere, turning her towards him. "Shit, are you hit?"

"I am, but I can bear it," she said, patting him on the shoulder. "Both of you are far away from your drop zone."

"Yeah, we figured," Malarkey said, and she smiled, though she looked exhausted. Exhausted, but jittery - her hand twitched incessantly on the butt of her M1 and her eyes kept jumping around, taking in everything. "You fighting with the French?"

She reached up and touched her beret. "Is it obvious?" she said, and Bill snorted, but stopped when the machine gun started up again. Karolina rose up, her eyes trained on the enemy gun. "Head to Foucarville - there is a railroad in the direction where I came, follow it south. I sent Toye and Wynn towards it ten minutes before. Catch up to them."

Malarkey and Bill watched in disbelief as she moved aside a branch with one arm and leveled her rifle at the machine gunners, breathing in deeply before firing off a shot with no warning. Across the field, a man screamed, and multiple voices broke out in panicked yells. Karolina looked down at the two men, her right eye twitching. "Go," she said, and Malarkey pulled Bill up from where he sat and they splashed across the water as the spy fired two more shots behind them.

"How the hell could she see that far away in the dark?" he asked, turning to look back at the woman holding her own against an unknown number of Krauts. Malarkey didn't answer him, just kept moving forward until the bottom of his boots touched the steel ties of the railroad, exactly where Karolina said it would be. He paused, wondered if they should go back for her, but Bill was already halfway down the tracks, and Malarkey jogged to catch up with him.

* * *

After she had sent Malarkey and Guarnere down the right path and taken out the machine gun in the field, Karolina felt her side constrict, and she wobbled towards the machine gun nest. She grabbed ahold of the gun's turret as she went down to her knees, holding onto her side and wincing at the stabbing pain. Davidson had sprinkled some sulfa powder on her wound and given her a bandage before they had gone their separate ways, and it had helped for a little while, but now there was only pain. She pressed her hand to the outside of the bandage and her fingers came away wet with blood. That was not good at all.

She unscrewed the lid of her canteen and leaned against the gun, watching the blood ooze out of the bullet wound in the dead German's neck across from her. She had crashed hard from her overdose, the result of too many little blue pills, and was depleted of all energy. She had no clue how much damage she had inflicted upon the coastline Germans, but things were starting to grow quiet again, the hum of airplanes further away than before. The majority of men had dropped, then, but not all - she had watched one C-47 crash to the ground and set fire to a field, and she had to dash to escape the reach of the flames aided by gasoline.

She checked her watch. It was only one in the morning, the sixth of June. She had been fighting for two hours, but it felt as if she had been outside for a lifetime. A breeze shifted her shaggy, sweaty hair away from her neck, and she sighed deeply. She could sit for a moment, but not forever. She still had so much work to do, had to find her way to Foucarville and find Easy Company, had to get the bullet out of her side before it became infected.

Against her own wishes, her body seized the opportunity to relax, and she passed out inside the enemy's machine gun nest.

Winters knew Guarnere was angry with him - the man hadn't stopped yammering on about how he was a good-for-nothing Quaker, along with some other choice insults, since he had chewed out Guarnere for taking out the German wagon before he gave the signal to do so. He caught Lipton's apologetic glance before the man turned to look back at the hot-headed Philadelphian with a warning look, which didn't stop Guarnere from complaining but cut down the volume of his voice.

"Bill's brother was killed in Monte Casino," Malarkey said to his right. "That's why he's so...grouchy. He found of right before the jump."

They sloshed through the marsh and up a small rise, finding themselves on the edge of a pond swarming with mosquitoes. So far, Normandy had been nothing but mud, water, and bugs. Dick slapped one off of his neck and glanced behind him to make sure Toye and Guarnere were keeping up. "How many brothers does he have?"

"To hear him talk about it, at least ten," Lipton said with a solemn smile. "He's got three other brothers in the fight, too. He's not his mother's only."

"That's good, then," Dick said.  _He_  was his mother's only, unfortunately, and he was sure that she would never forgive him if he didn't come back home. He hoped she would never get a letter in the mail from some captain expressing his regrets. He looked over at Malarkey, who seemed pale but otherwise fine. "Stroke of luck, hooking up with Guarnere and Toye, huh?"

Malarkey looked at him, and then his mouth popped open as his eyes went wide. "Shit, sir, I forgot to tell you," he said. "I mean, sorry, I didn't mean to swear, but you're not gonna believe it, how we all got together."

"It was damn lucky, sir," Toye said, ditching Guarnere to join the conversation. "I ran into Agent Shütze right after I landed. It was like she was waiting for me or something. She told me to go to the railroad, and I met up with Guarnere and Malarkey, who had also seen her. She was pointing people in the right direction."

"Seriously?" said Lipton. "How could she have gotten to all of you around the same time?"

"She looked pretty beat up," said Malarkey. "I don't know how she was even walking, she had gotten pinged in the arm and in the side. And then she attacked a machine gun nest by herself. That's when we left to go meet up with Toye and Popeye."

Dick looked at them all, an eyebrow raised. "Is she alright?"

"She didn't look alright," said Guarnere, and Dick turned in surprise. "She was covered in blood - not her own blood, I'm guessing. And wearing a fruity little beret. Fighting with the French and all, she said. But her eyes looked crazy."

Dick nodded and lead them past a dead cow. "Nixon told me she was guerilla fighting with the  _Maquis_  groups in the area," he said. "Did she say she would find us?"

"No, sir, but she seemed like she was pretty busy," Malarkey said.

Hall, the stray soldier from Able, walked closer to listen in. "Who is Karolina? Is that a broad?"

"Shut the hell up and mind your own business, Cowboy," spat Guarnere.

* * *

Karolina woke up with a jolt, the sound of sonic booms shaking her off of the gun and onto the sticky, blood-soaked dirt. She winced as she landed on her wounded arm and looked up to see the sky alight with the rays of dawn. She shook her sleeve up her arm and checked her watch - it was half-past six in the morning, and the naval landings had just begun.

" _Oh, fick micht_ ," she groaned, rising up from the ground to see three dead Germans around her. She was covered in dust and dirt and the blood on her shirt and pants had hardened until the fabric was as stiff as a board; her head was pounding, no doubt the after-effect of the overdose, and all the blood in her body rushed to her head. She rose her eyes over the webbing of the machine gun nest and peeked out over the neighboring fields. Everything was still, as if the fighting had moved past her while she had been asleep. She stood up and stifled another groan as she twisted accidentally - she placed a hand to her side, and it felt hot to the touch. That was very, very bad.

She climbed out of the nest slowly, rolling her M1 onto the grass before her, and laid there for a minute as she willed the blood to settle in her veins. She stared up at the sky. A gorgeous dawn was breaking, one with streaks of gold reaching across the orange glow near the horizon.

After she had regained her equilibrium, she pushed herself up on her knees and grabbed her rifle. Somewhere, far off in the distance, a long-range artillery gun was firing rhythmically. She rose to her feet and ambled towards the road, grabbing her map out of the pocket of her pants, and then sighed when she saw that it, too, had gotten bloody during the fight.

She had told everyone to go to Foucarville, but they had probably taken out the cannon garrisons by that point. She also knew that the original objective was to land near Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, and so some of them might have gone there, as well. She slapped the map against her thigh, frustrated - she had two options, south or east, and she had no clue which one to take.

The gun in the distance fired off again, and she took out the little pocket compass she had kept with her since her days in the Abwehr. The gun was to the east, and she heard shouts that sounded distinctly American in that direction. She heaved a great sigh, adjusted her grip on her rifle, and began to walk down the road in that direction, hoping she had made the right choice.

* * *

Ron walked down the same road from Sainte-Marie-du-Mont towards a pack of captured Germans, entirely livid and frustrated with everyone around him. No one had any information, ninety percent of his company was missing, and everyone but him had seen a crazed German spy dashing through the night, slaughtering Krauts left and right.

Nearly half of the men from Easy and Dog had run into Karolina Shütze in the darkness - according to those men, she appeared out of the woods as if she were a specter, covered head to toe in blood and killing rogue Germans in the heat of the moment - and she had pointed them in the right direction, making sure they would hook up with their companies, before disappearing back into the countryside on a killing spree.

He had not had the good fortune to run into her - in fact, he hadn't seen anyone, friend or foe, since he had landed until he had arrived in Sainte-Marie-du-Mont and realized that everyone was talking about her. Well, talking about her and the fact that she had been shot twice but was still forging ahead.

Guarnere in particular ground down on his nerves. "She was bleedin' like hell, I tell ya what," said the man in his Philly accent as he chain-smoked. Ron turned to give him a glare that the man seemed to miss, but Liebgott saw it, and he shifted on his feet as Ron walked towards them. Liebgott slapped Guarnere as a warning to stop jabbering, but the loud-mouthed Italian wouldn't be deterred.

"Then she turned around and just started firing on this group of machine gunners," said Guarnere, squinting his eye and mimicking pulling a trigger. "Didn't hesitate or nothing."

"Where did this happen?"

Guarnere looked up at Ron in surprise but rose up from where he had been sitting. "Sir," he said in greeting. "She said we landed around a town called Petite Hameau."

Ron wanted to ask why they didn't give her any medical help, why they had let her go, why they had followed her orders, but he knew they wouldn't have answers. They had been startled and discombobulated, and she wouldn't have let any of them help her, anyway. He rubbed his jaw and stared off down the road, where guns were going off more frequently with every minute. "Have you seen any other operatives?"

"Yeah," said Liebgott. "The Russian gal is in there with Lieutenant Compton, arguing about something." Ron nodded at the two men and marched towards the repurposed barn where officers were reconvening with their companies, attempting to sort out the rosters of men accounted for and men lost. He caught sight of Winters and Compton standing near the wall, heads together in calculation.

Winters turned when Ron approached him. "Hello, Lieutenant Speirs," he said, and Ron shook the man's hand. Out of everyone from Easy, he was genuinely glad to see that Winters had made it. "How many men of Dog Company got assembled?"

"A handful, maybe twenty," he replied, eyeing Buck Compton, who looked less than thrilled. "Where's Medvedeva?"

"The Russian broad?" Buck replied. "She's over there, sitting on a haystack."

"She's got a nasty cut to the leg," Winters said. "Bayonet, apparently. Buck tried to help her, but she jumped up and head butted him."

Compton reached up and touched his busted lip. "Hurt like a bitch, too."

"Are you the only officer that made it?" Winters asked, and Ron nodded, but his eyes went to Buck's front pocket, where the man had fished out a pack of cigarettes and flung them across the room.

"So far," Ron replied. "Still waiting for orders. You got some cigarettes?"

Buck looked at the man suspiciously before handing over a fresh pack, and Ron snatched them from his hand and walked off before the other lieutenant could ask for them back. "Hey, keep the pack!" Buck called, but Ron ignored him and went towards the other end of the room where Medvedeva sat, bleeding onto a stack of hay while some poor medic dealt with her wound and her attitude.

Katya's blonde hair was matted to her head with a thick layer of blood and grime, and the grease on her face had melted down in streaks. She looked up from her lap as Ron approached and gave him one of her creepy smiles. "Ah, it's the Dog man."

"Lieutenant," he corrected, and she shrugged. He held out the pack. "Cigarette?"

"Yes," she said, and he handed her one, and before he could offer she had lit it with her own lighter. She flinched as the medic hit a nerve, and she glared down at him. " _Ladno, eto bol'no!"_

"Where are your friends?" he asked. She exhaled and sighed, looking annoyed as if everyone had been asking her the same question.

"Liesel is dead, I saw her head fly off her body," she said, her voice flat. "Claude, he's dead, according to Free French. I saw the Italian in Bayeux, beheading a man with a sword." She stopped and inhaled, looking at him with glittering eyes. "But you want to know about Shütze. I will tell you, I know nothing about her."

"You haven't seen her at all?" he asked. Medvedeva shook her head and looked out the door at the early morning light.

"She will come," she said. "Patience."

Ron sighed and walked out of the barn, all out of the little patience he had, but was stopped by Major Strayer's runner, who put a hand on his arm. It only took one glare for the man to remove his hand and take a step back.

"Lieutenant Speirs," he said, out of breath. "Major Strayer wants you to take care of a group of German prisoners. They're down the road a-ways." Ron looked at him blankly, and the man adjusted his helmet. "We've been ordered to take no prisoners, you understand?"

He thought of Karolina, bleeding in a field somewhere, laying in the dirt. "I understand," he said quietly, and he turned and marched down the muddy road, eyeing the spot where ten captured Krauts sat next to a felled tree, passing Malarkey on his way there. He fiddled with the cigarettes in his pocket, and he locked eyes with one miserable looking Kraut who sat looking towards the road.

_I want you to be the best killers,_ Karolina had said, so many months ago when everyone felt safe and confident in England and the war had seemed a thousand years away. He swung his Thompson around as he climbed up the embankment and offered the Krauts the fresh pack of cigarettes. He would be the best killer, and he'd start now.

* * *

Just as the day couldn't get any stranger, Karolina spied a mud-covered Ella Abruzza walking cheerfully down the road in front of her, holding a pistol in one hand and the other hand resting on the handle of a sword that had been stuck through her belt. It was such an odd sight that Karolina rubbed her eyes to make sure that she was seeing clearly and was not hallucinating due to blood loss, dehydration, hunger, and drained energy. But sure enough, there was Ella, whistling a jaunty tune as if she were on a pleasant morning stroll and not knee deep in bloody mud.

"Ella?" she called, and the girl froze before turning so fast that she lost balance, her face stretched into a huge smile that showed her gums, and she ran back up the road towards Karolina with a crazed look of relief in her eye.

Karolina braced herself for the impact, but Ella slowed to a stop at the last moment, looking at her carefully. "First, I have been looking for you everywhere," the girl said, panting. "You are hard to find. Second, where are you hurt?"

She lifted her shirt and showed Ella the red-stained bandage wrapped around her stomach. "Once here, and once in my left arm," she said. She reached out a hand towards Ella, and the girl took it and slung Karolina's arm over her shoulder. "Help me?"

" _Certo,_ " Ella said, pausing to enfold Karolina in a gentle hug. Karolina was so tired that she allowed the girl to wrap her arms around her. "I am glad you are alive. I missed you in Bayeux. It has been a hundred years."

"It has been a month," Karolina said dryly, but Ella squeezed her a little harder. "Okay, I missed you as well."

Ella leaned back and smiled brightly, and Karolina noticed the ugly gash on the top of her head that had wept blood down the side of her face into her hair. "I knew you had made a friend," she said. "I am glad it was me."

The women hobbled down the road together, Ella keeping Karolina's arm around her shoulder despite the fact that Karolina had protested multiple times, insisting that she could walk on her own. They passed the smoking ruins of farm houses, weeping French women sitting outside bombed barns, paratroopers strung through the trees like Christmas ornaments, charred bodies of unfortunate airmen, and dozens of dead Germans twisted into pained positions. They looked at the sights and sounds of a world brought back into war and hurriedly told each other what they had done since they had left England.

"I found a widow," Ella said. The breeze blew a cloud of smoke towards them, and Karolina coughed. "She was very sweet; her husband had been a French officer and he was killed in '41. She gave me shelter and helped me plan the plot."

"The plot to do what?" Karolina asked, and Ella wiped the sweat from her eyes before shrugging, a little too casual in the movement. "What plot?"

"I poisoned them all," Ella said. "It was easy, they left their food exposed in the bar they used for a dining hall. I sprinkled it into their coffee. Fifty of them were gone, like that." She snapped her fingers for emphasis. "But then I had to hide, and the widow was shot because she let me into her house. I regret that."

Karolina watched the girl's bottom lip twitch, and she squeezed her shoulder. "It is war, those things happen to good people," she said. "She died for her country."

Ella shrugged, breathing shallowly, and Karolina tried to distract her with her own tale, telling her about Benoit and the Maquis and how she killed the men from the roof of the brewery, about the little mice that ate her bread and their small pink ears, about her beret and her new pistol that sounded like a cork coming out of the neck of a bottle of wine, and soon Ella was smiling at her again, her eyes watery but her voice steady.

"Look," Ella said, pointing down the very muddy road they were sloshing through. "There they are." Even from yards away, she could see the arm patches of the screaming eagle on the sides of the men's shirts, and she sighed, looking forward to sitting down. They were halfway there when they caught sight of a pile of dead horses on an embankment next to the road; Ella gagged, and before Karolina could stop her, she threw up in the gutter.

"Agent Shütze?" called out a calm voice, and Karolina turned to see the nice medic from Aldbourne -  _Roe, his name is Roe_ \- walking towards her with wide eyes. "Jesus, are you hit?"

"Yes," she said, dragging Ella away from the gutter and the dead horses, making her way towards Roe. A dilapidated barn came into view, and her knees felt weak at the idea of laying down in a soft pile of hay. "I need you to extract two bullets from me. And Ella needs a nap, I believe."

* * *

Even as Ron climbed out of the trench at Brecourt Manor and ran towards the fourth and final German gun on his own, he thought that climbing out of the trench and sprinting towards an entrenched Kraut position was pretty stupid. But he couldn't let Easy Company see all the action, not without him. He urged the five Dog Company men behind him to take out the straggling Krauts as he dashed into the gun nest and waved at Winters, giving the all-clear.

And later that afternoon, as he ambled back into Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, lurking behind Winters as he gave his report on the assault to Strayer, he thought he was pretty stupid for scanning the crowd of soldiers for one woman, until he heard enraged screams in German coming from the makeshift aid building to his right.

"Ow,  _mein Gott, könnte man ein wenig sanfter sein..._ I am being still!"

He had stopped short in the courtyard, stared at the entrance to the building as men were brought in and out in quick succession, and he pushed his way towards the door without really thinking of what he would do, what he would say when he walked in there and saw her for the first time in a month. She would certainly look at him strangely - they were never friends, could never be friends now - but if he could just see her, that would be enough.

The inside of the building was dim - what few windows there were had been blown out by blasts, and broken glass littered the floor. He weaved past the triage station, stepped over stretchers of men lying on the ground, and saw the back of Doc Roe's head in a far corner. He sped up and was greeted with the sight of Karolina Shütze being held down by Ella as Roe attempted to pry something from the side of her stomach. It was then that he noticed that Karolina had her shirt entirely unbuttoned, and he looked away quickly from her dirty white brassiere.  _Oh, Christ._ He turned to flee, but it was too late - Ella had caught his eye, and her expression transformed from a weary, hard-battled look to a full-blown smirk of understanding. He focused his glare on her, daring her to say anything, and she cocked an eyebrow, daring him right back.

"I need you to stop  _wiggling_ ," Roe said, frustrated. He was juggling a sopping handful of bloody bandages in one hand and a pair of medical tongs in the other and looked as if he was going to kill Karolina himself if the wound didn't. "I'm not gonna be able to get it out if you keep carrying on like this."

"It hurts,  _es tut mir Leid,_ " she said, knocking her head back and exhaling loudly. "I am sorry. Can I have some -"

"No, you cannot have morphine," Roe said, getting back to work. "You ain't had anything to eat in two days and you're close to hemorrhagic shock, so no. You know that."

Karolina let out a groan of despair and knocked her head back against the table. " _Fick mich_ ," she said, looking up at Ella and then turning to look directly at Ron once she caught the direction of her friend's gaze. "Oh, hello."

He snapped out of it and met her gaze, saw how her eyes wavered in and out of consciousness, and he stepped forward and put his hands down on her boots. She tilted her head forward and looked at him as if he had betrayed her deeply, and Ron nodded at Roe. "Do it, I'll hold her down."

"You bast -" she began, but she slapped a hand over her mouth as Roe dug into her side in earnest and fished around for the bullet. Her legs thrashed of their own accord, but Ron held them down, putting his whole-body weight on them to keep her still. Ella reached over to a pan of water and rung out a dirty rag, cleaning her friend's face of the sweat and blood and dirt that had settled in the creases of her skin.

"Got it," Roe said, his arm immobile as he grasped the bullet within her. "Sir, hand me that pan."

Ron grabbed the tin pan with his spare hand and scooted it to Roe, and the medic slowly extracted the tongs as Karolina whimpered, but he held the offending bullet fragment up for her to see as she let her hand slide away from her mouth. "Maybe if you had been a bit more responsible, you wouldn't have to suffer so much."

"I cannot do surgery on myself," she whispered, her hands inching down to her wound. Roe slapped them away as he sprinkled sulfa powder on the bloody gash, and Karolina glanced up at Ron with cross, dazed expression.

"Nice to see you again, too," she said, and he felt himself smiling, even though he didn't want to. Karolina scoffed as she let her head roll back, and she took the rag from Ella's hand and wiped her neck, muttering quietly to herself in German. Whatever she said, Ella laughed in response and squeezed her arm.

"Thank you for helping," Roe said to Ron, truly grateful. "Did you need anything looked at?"

"No," Ron said. "I heard the screams and had to come see what was going on." He eased up off of Karolina's boots and looked away as she buttoned up her destroyed shirt. "We're moving out in a few hours."

"Good to know," said Roe, picking up the pan and the offending bullet. "I've got rounds to make." He pointed at Ella. "She doesn't get off this table until she eats."

Ella saluted him, and Roe walked away shaking his head, done with the women of the OSS for the day. Ella gave Ron an accepting nod before reaching behind her and grabbing a box of K-rations. "Here, maybe you can make her eat?"

Ron took it, but Karolina shook her head, eyeing the box warily. "I am not hungry," she said, her accent thick, and she looked up at Ron inquiringly. "But do you have a cigarette?"

He grabbed the spare pack from his jacket pocket and shook one out, and she grabbed it with a shaky hand, almost dropping it onto the ground. He plucked it out of her hand and held it up to her lips, and she rolled her eyes before she bit down on the filter. " _Was?_ " she asked.

"I thought you didn't smoke," he said.

"I do now," she said darkly, arching an eyebrow. "Got a light?"

He crouched down and grabbed his lighter out of his pocket, flicked the wheel until the flame sparked and lit the end of the cigarette. She inhaled deeply, wincing at the new sensation, and then coughed up a lungful of smoke as Ella laughed above her, patting her head.

Ron took one last look at her before he forced himself to turn around and walk through the building and out of the door. Of course, once he stepped out into the courtyard, he realized Nixon had been leaning against the outer wall, watching the scene inside with a shit-eating grin.

"Shut up," Ron said, and he walked into the night, trying hard to ignore the sound of Nixon's delighted chuckles echoing behind him


	15. Headaches

Chapter Fifteen

Headaches

_Normandy, France_

_June 1944_

 

Someone,  _who was going to get a knife to the face,_ was poking Karolina's cheek with a cold metal spoon.

"Rise and shine," said the voice of Nixon in her ear, and she cracked one eye open and swiveled it towards him. The light was too strong, though, and she squeezed her eye shut, groaning at the pain radiating from her sinuses. Nixon chuckled, but there was no joy in it.

"Yeah, I expected that's how you'd feel," he said, setting down the metal plate behind her head. "So, I brought you some coffee."

She opened her eyes at that magic word and stared through the light - Karolina rubbed a hand over her face but froze as her arm seized up, the stitches pulling against her skin. "Ow," she said, dropping her arm carefully back into place and sighing, dreading the inspection of the rest of her body that would come later. She braced herself and then opened her eyes fully, taking in the dusty ceiling of the medical shed and Nixon's face, hovering over her with a genial look that didn't mask the disapproval in his eyes.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she asked, her voice gravelly. Her throat felt strange, sore as if she had a cold, but she didn't have a cold yesterday. She reached up and rubbed at her lymph nodes.

"Because," Nixon said, leaning behind her and grabbing the coffee, waving the tin cup over her face in a tantalizing circle, "I know what you did."

She blinked a few times. "I did...a lot of things," she said carefully. "Which one are you referring to?"

Nixon coughed and took a sip of her coffee before handing it down to her. She cupped the warm tin in her hands and sat it carefully on her chest. " _You_ , you psycho," he said, "Did more than anyone in the entire airborne yesterday. But you  _also_  took the most Pervitin a person can ingest without having cardiac arrest and turning blue."

She inhaled deeply and leaned her head forward to take a sip from the cup's rim, but couldn't quite reach it, not with the massive bullet wound pulling at the skin on her abdomen, and she let her head drop with an annoyed sigh. Nixon plucked the coffee from her hand and sat it down behind her before slipping an arm under her back.

"On three," he said. "One, two,  _three_." He pushed, and she grabbed onto the edge of the table, hauling herself upward with a groan as her side constricted, and she took a few deep breaths before reaching over for the coffee. It sat next to a tin plate of what looked like solidified beans, and she grabbed those as well, too hungry to care about its consistency. She put a spoonful in her mouth and ignored the cold, slimy feeling, and took a sip of coffee to wash it down.

Nixon was still glaring at her, still demanding an answer, and she looked at him frankly. "I knew what I was doing," she said, scraping up more beans. "It was necessary at the time."

"I wouldn't call purposefully overdosing on Nazi methamphetamines 'necessary' at any time," he said, crossing his arms over his chest. "You're lucky you didn't pass out and die."

She chuckled once, dry and low, and raised her eyebrow. "I did pass out," she said, raising the coffee to her lips. "In a machine gun nest."

Nixon wiped a hand across his two-day stubble and walked in a circle. "Alright, you know what?" he said, and before Karolina could stop him, he swiped the plate and spoon from her hand and walked towards the doorway.

"My beans!" she cried, but he didn't stop, so she picked up her coffee and slid down off the table and hobbled after him, keeping as much weight off her left side as possible. She reached the doorframe and saw him walking across the courtyard, pausing to check on a tall blonde man working on a map by the side of a jeep. She shuffled towards him as quickly as possible, squinting in the late-afternoon sun, her ears pounding as blood rushed to her head.

"You are not funny!" she said when she reached his shoulder, but Nixon refused to look at her. The blonde man stepped back from the jeep as if he had been scalded, and Karolina gave him a dismissive glance before turning on Nixon.

"You aren't funny, either," Nixon said quietly, his voice livid. She realized that he was being serious, and that he really was concerned, but she was  _fine_. She had been fine so far, and she would continue to be fine. "You have got to take better care of yourself, I'm serious. The only reason I haven't reported you is because I know that it wouldn't do any good and because I know you'd kill me before you'd get dragged back to England. You have got to stop taking that stuff."

How dare he take this argument into public, next to this man she didn't know, and air her business in front of everyone. She drank from her coffee and gave him an icy look, trying hard to quell her temper. "I have been taking that medicine for six years," she said. "If it is bad for me, I would know by now."

"It is not medicine," Nixon said, leveling her with a knowing look. "It's illegal enemy drugs that string out your system and makes you a liability."

Karolina resisted the urge to throw the coffee in Nixon's face. "And what of your habit? Is that not a liability?" That took some wind out of Nixon's sails. He opened his mouth to argue, but she could see that she had struck a weak spot in his defense, and she turned to the blonde man who had been observing their conversation in fascination. "And who are you?"

The man smiled and shook his head. "I'm 1st Lieutenant Buck Compton," he said. "I know who you are, though - you're Karolina Shütze, right?"

She squinted at him. "Who has been talking about me?"

"Guarnere and Malarkey, mostly," he said, folding up the map. "Pretty much told everyone about how you ran around Causeway 2 taking out Krauts and pointing people in the right direction. You get hit?"

"Yes, she did," said Nixon, who was still stewing. "And speaking of that, we need you and Medvedeva and Abruzza to brief the officers on what you three were up to in the past two days. Apparently, you also need to send a report to London, typed."

She took in his defensive posture and shrugged. "Fine," she said, and then she took another look at the blonde man, named... "Your name is  _buck_? Like a deer?"

He laughed, and it echoed around the courtyard, catching the attention of the few men who were working on equipment around them. "It's a nickname, honey. I didn't choose it."

She grimaced at the  _honey_. "What is your real name?"

"Lynn," he said with a smirk. "Hell of a name, right?"

"That does not make sense," she said. "Buck is not a derivative of Lynn. Is Lynn not a woman's name in English?"

"Anyway," Nixon cut in, waving the plate of beans under her nose. "You can finish breakfast while you brief us." She tried to snatch the plate out of his hand, but he dodged her and walked off towards a neighboring building.

"I joined the company in Upottery," Buck said as they followed Nixon. "Everybody was worried to hell about you for a week straight. You really gave some people a heart attack."

She tried to wrap her mind around the fact that all of this sabotage, chaos, and fighting had only taken up a week. In her mind, it felt like years. It still didn't seem real to her that the Americans were here, in France, and that she would soon be surrounded by the men again. As annoying as they were, she had missed their foolishness and their company. And now she had this massive blonde giant walking beside her, chatting as if they were old friends. The Karolina who came to Aldbourne in January would not have recognized her now. Things had turned out to be very strange.

"There were complications," she said quietly, passing a sleepy group of men from Fox Company, who looked at her in surprise.  _Surprise that I am alive and did not run back to Germany_. Nixon entered a crumbling stone building down the road, and she stepped over the threshold to see Winters, Welsh, Nixon and Speirs standing in silence as Ella and Katya yelled at each other from across the room.

" _Basta!_ " said Ella, very red in the face. "I do not believe you one bit, your story stinks of lies!"

Katya had a dark look on her face, one that Karolina sensed preceded a stabbing. "You don't have to believe me," she said, and then she looked at Karolina over her shoulder. "As if we all haven't killed before, to protect ourselves."

"May I please have those beans?" she muttered in Nixon's ear, and he handed them over without comment. Karolina scooped up a bite and popped it into her mouth before giving the men a lazy salute with her spoon. "Lieutenants. What a lovely afternoon."

* * *

Nixon was angry, but then again, he had poked the dragon in an unnecessarily aggressive fashion. There was a better way to speak to Karolina about her reliance upon the drugs without throwing the word 'Nazi' into her face, but he had panicked when Roe had told him that she had an irregular heartbeat and uncontrollable tremors when she had finally fallen asleep. It had worried him enough to throw the stolen vial of Pervitin into the fire by the men's trucks, and enough that he had broken into Karolina's trunk, which had arrived that night from the coast. He had picked through it, not caring if she knew that someone had been searching inside, gathered up all the little bottles of blue pills and burned them as well before anyone else could get their hands on them.

Looking at her now, she seemed pale, worn, her eyes bloodshot and her face irritable. He didn't know what she would do when she discovered that all of her pills were gone. He wondered how much of her personality - her fighting ability, her strength, her viciousness - was her own grit or a product of chemical enhancement. In the back of his mind, an evil little voice whispered something about the Vat 69 he kept hidden in Dick's footlocker, but he waved that idea away. That was nothing compared to Karolina's problems.

She stood in between Katya and Ella, trying to reason with them in a mash of Italian-German-Russian garbling, and the men in the room looked as if they'd rather be anywhere else than there. Winters' hands twitched, as if he was considering physically separating them before someone got shot, but then Karolina sighed and walked towards the table in the room that was covered in maps, looking at the men apologetically. She leaned on her knuckles and ran her tongue over her teeth.

"There seems to be a disagreement over whether or not Katya was justified in killing Liesel Neuner," she said dryly.

"Who is Liesel Neuner?" asked Harry, incredibly confused.

Katya joined Karolina at the table, shooting a dark look at Ella. "Neuner was another operative, from London. We were together in Caen. She was feeding information to a German captain. I saw her meeting him three times."

"When we came up with the plan for the sabotage of the electric posts, the Germans were waiting for us at the plant, and there was a slaughter of Free French that day. Liesel escaped unharmed - a miracle, no?"

"You have no proof," Ella said from the back corner of the room. "You know the rules. You need to have physical proof!"

"I tried to take papers, but the Germans burnt them all," Katya said. "She knew that I had discovered her secret, she tried to escape."

"Alright," Winters said, stepping in with his hands raised. "This is clearly something you three need to discuss amongst yourselves. But we are moving out in a few hours and need to get a lay of the land, so Karolina, why don't you go first?"

Her fingers played at the edge of the map as she stared down at the Normandy coastline. "I arrived in Sainte-Mere-Eglise on the evening of the seventh of May. It was a quiet town, almost no citizens, and when I walked into the  _platz..._ " She paused, searching for the right word. "The square, yes, the center square, there were platoons of German soldiers patrolling, and I was picked up by three officers. As if they had been waiting for me."

"What did they do?" Nixon asked.

"Under the veil of escorting me to an inn where I could stay, they asked me questions and recorded my alias and false point of origin, and then the head of the intelligence squad used intimidation tactics to let me know he was suspicious of me. But later I learned that the owner of the inn was with the  _Maquis_ , and he helped me escape when my cover was blown."

She reached into her pocket and unfolded the poster that had hung over her makeshift bed in Benoit's brewery, flattening it out on the tabletop and pushing it towards the officers. "A horrible photo of me, but I knew they would discover who I was eventually. I am... well-known in German military circles."

Welsh picked up the paper and grimaced. "More like 'infamous', I'd guess," he said. "Wow, is this a mugshot?"

"When my cover was blown," Karolina continued, shooting Welsh a little glare as he passed the poster down the line, "Benoit helped me escape when the Germans came for me. That was the thirtieth of May, and he let me live in his brewery in Foucarville for a few days until the Invasion occurred."

"What happened to the German spooks who were after you?" Nixon said. She was awfully composed; he watched her glance at Speirs as he held the poster, and something about that piqued his interest. She glanced back at him, her eyes tired and empty of all resentment, and he felt sorry for baiting her earlier.

"I killed them," she said simply, as if it was implied.

Speirs looked up, held her in his analytical gaze. "How?" he asked bluntly.

"They came for me in the brewery, I crawled out of a window and onto the roof, and I took them out with my M1," she said, sticking her hands in her pockets. "There were four of them. We burnt the bodies later."

Katya nodded her approval beside her. "Excellent."

"The rest you know," Karolina said, tucking a loose strand of dark hair behind her ear. "We executed heavy sabotage of railroads and guns, we waited for the signal from Radio Londres that you were coming, and then we engaged in guerilla fighting in the night." She paused and took a sip of her lukewarm coffee. "I started on the edge of Utah and worked up. If I found an American, I told him where to go. I was hit in the side and the arm, I stopped for some rest, I followed the road into Sainte-Marie-du-Mont."

"And what of the enemy activity in Normandy?"

"The Germans have strong holds in Caen and Bayeux," Katya said, pointing on the map. "I tried to rally townspeople in Caen to revolt, it was difficult. They live in fear of both the partisans and the Germans."

"Bayeux has been in a state of chaos since the men started landing yesterday," Winters said dryly. "I think your plan worked."

"Not as well as we would have liked," Nixon said, and Katya scoffed. "The men on the beach are still having a difficult time getting into that town. What made you decide to kill Liesel?"

Katya looked at him as if he had asked why she had decided to squash a bug. "After she walked away untouched from the fight near the electrical posts, she immediately went to a bar and I saw her go into a back room. I was able to enter the building and listen near the door. She was speaking on the identity of all operatives from Britain in Normandy."

Ella hopped onto a bale of hay and shook her head. Katya continued, entirely unfazed by the Italian girl's antics. "So, I waited until she went back to her billet, accosted her and accused her of what I had heard, and she denied it. I looked for evidence as I held her at gunpoint but found nothing. There was no time to let her convince me that she was not guilty."

Nixon wiped a hand over his lips and raised an eyebrow. "You're gonna have a hell of a hard time persuading anyone that eschewing proper protocol was necessary."

"I do not answer to the Army," Katya said with a shrug. "I condone my actions and their consequences."

* * *

Karolina watched the way that Katya's eyes glazed over, as if she was taking herself into an emotionless state to not give anything away, and she chewed the inside of her lip. Did she believe Medvedeva? Not really. The Russian had always struck her as private, someone with their own agenda, with layers of allegiances. If there was anyone working for their home country, it would be her - she was too proud of Russia, too defensive, too quick to fight if anyone insulted her homeland. Karolina was still proud to be German, on some level - though not so proud of Germany in its current state, that was certain - but she understood that Germany deserved to be hated. Only someone loyal to Stalin would not be able to handle the simplest of critiques. She had to contact Tar, but not in a joint write-up. She needed her Enigma machine, but she had left it behind in Foucarville. It was beyond her reach now.

Speirs was watching her, and she looked at him. He looked away quickly and she cocked her head. He had held her feet down while the medic Roe had extracted the bullet from her side.  _And she had smoked a cigarette,_ that's why her throat felt sore. He had appeared out of nowhere to help her, even though he wasn't in her company, even though he had no obligation to.  _Guilt?_ Probably not. He had given her the knife in England, and she reached into her pocket and touched its hilt. What, then?  _Friendship?_  She almost laughed. He didn't seem like the type to make friends, not with her. But still, she had been so glad to see him, even when she had been in pain. The thought made her insides churn, made her nervous.

"Ella, what did you do?" Winters asked, and she focused on the task at hand.

Ella sighed and flopped against the hay bale. "No one ever suspected me," she said. "It made me wonder if they knew who I was, they were very friendly. I volunteered to feed them, and they let me in the kitchen, just like that." She snapped her fingers. "I waited a few days until they got used to me, and then they all had coffee one night, in this big container." She reached into her pack and pulled out the can of arsenic powder, the one that had been carefully nestled in her trunk in Aldbourne. She shook it and listened to the powder fill the empty space inside. "I think I have three-quarters left," she said thoughtfully, ignorant of the horrified faces of the men.

"Very tidy," Katya said, giving Ella an appraising look. "I admire this method."

Ella shoved the powder back into her bag and gave Katya a disgusted look. "I did not enjoy doing it," she said sharply. "I did it because it was the easiest way."

"How many men did you kill?" Nixon asked.

"Fifty," Ella said, staring at the ground. "And the woman who was shielding me was killed in retaliation. My fault."

After Winters took down their observations of the layout of the land around them, Karolina walked out into the warm sunshine of the day and surveyed the road. Her head was beginning to ache, and she pressed her fingers to her temple and rubbed little circles into her skin.  _That's what you get,_ said the mocking voice in her head, but she ignored it. She had things to do, and she wanted to find the men, see how many had made it to France.

"Hey," said the jovial, blonde American behind her - Buck - and she turned and looked at him curiously. His hair was almost transparent in the sunshine. He smiled at her, immune to her dark mood, and strolled up to her, his hands shoved in his pockets. He seemed like the kind to make the women swoon, but she wasn't a swooning type. She raised her eyebrows inquisitively, and he chuckled lowly.

"You wanna catch up with the men?" Buck asked, and she shrugged lightly. "They're down the road a bit. I'll take you there, if you want."

She narrowed her eyes at him and he laughed again, looking away.  _His defensive reflex_ , she thought.  _How peculiar._  He was too charming, he clearly wanted something. She looked behind her, searching for Nixon, but her eyes found Speirs instead. He was leaning up against the doorway, watching their conversation, but when she looked at him he walked towards her, as if he knew that she wanted someone to rid her of this overly-friendly giant. He completely ignored Buck as he turned towards her and offered her the pack of cigarettes he kept on his sleeve.

She waved them away. "I will save them for times of crisis," she said, giving him a small grin. "The other one ripped my throat to pieces."

He looked down the road, but she could tell he was amused. "You get used to it," he said, tucking the pack into his pocket before giving her arm a glance. "How's the wound?"

"It hurts," she said. "More than a punch to the face."

He dropped his genial look, and she laughed through her nose at the annoyance on his face. "A joke," she said, and he crossed his arms, putting on his neutral expression. "It will be fine. Thank you for helping me, even though I am sure I tried to kick your teeth out." She looked at Buck, who was staring at Speirs with an incredulous look on his face. "Where is Easy?"

"I'll lead you there," Buck said. "It's not too far, and besides..." Before he could finish his thought, he put a large hand on her shoulder, and Karolina felt herself go rigid. She didn't realize that she had slapped his hand off of her until she was a good foot away from him. Buck stepped back, his hands raised in surrender. She found that she was holding the silver knife in her hand, and her blood pumped painfully through her brain. Apparently, she wasn't as fine as she thought. She squinted her eyes shut and opened them quickly, willing the throbbing in her ears to go away.

"I do not like to be touched," she said slowly, Speirs' shadow clouding her peripheral vision. "By people I do not know." Speirs took a step forward, his back towards her, creating a barricade between her and the blonde man.

"Fuck, I'm sorry," Buck said carefully. "I mean, shit, sorry for cursing... the Russian broad decked me the other day when I was trying to help, I didn't mean anything by it..."

Karolina forced her body to relax and put the knife back in her pocket. "I understand," she said. "I react poorly when surprised."

"I won't do it again," he repeated to her, but his eyes were trained on Speirs, whose hand had tightened around the holster of his pistol. "Look, let's just get you down there, they've been asking about you."

"I'll go with her," said the voice of Nixon behind them, and the man walked forward and faced the three of them with a muted expression of wicked delight on his face. "You two have plenty of work to do, I imagine." He placed his hand on Karolina's arm and looked at Buck pointedly when she didn't shrug him off. "How about it?"

"I can easily go on my own," she said, plucking Nixon's hand off of her arm. "But come along, if you must." Speirs gave her one last assessing look before turning on his heel and walking in the opposite direction.

Karolina sighed and began to hobble down the road with Nixon at her side, already fed up with men for the day, and she had only been awake for two hours. Nixon was silent as he kept pace with her, and they both dodged the deep mud puddles that were tainted red with blood, listening to the sounds of gunfire in the distance. "Buck's a good man," Nixon said. "He just doesn't know when to quit."

"He should learn," Karolina said, stopping as she felt her side cramp up. She pressed a hand to her ribcage and breathed into the pain, willing her muscles to loosen up, training her body to accept its newest wound. Nixon walked over to help her, but she held up a hand. "I will be fine, I need to learn how to work through the pain."

"Don't exert yourself," he said, and she laughed dryly as she slowly straightened up. "I shouldn't have antagonized you earlier. I'm sure it was a bad way to wake up."

She shrugged, not accepting his apology but not refusing it, either. "Everything you said was correct," she said quietly. "I cannot remember everything I did, fully. It is the side effect. But that is a good thing, I suppose."

Nixon looked upset by that statement, but before he could say anything she caught sight of a group of tired-looking men leaning up against a memorial to the Great War, and distinctly recognized the grumpy faces of Toye and Johnny Martin staring down the road at her. She wiggled the beret down on her head and smiled when Toye stood up and waved at her.

"Well," she said, taking small steps up to the memorial. "Everyone seems to have all of their limbs."

"You're one to talk," said Guarnere, shoving himself off the steps and hopping over the chain strung around the monument. He pulled her into a hug and she patted him on the back. Everyone seemed to want to touch her today, to make sure she was real and alive and walking. "Last time we saw you, we thought you were about to lose an arm."

She raised the arm in question and felt around the stitches. "Roe sewed it back on," she said, glancing at the other Easy men that had come up to say hello. She shook Johnny Martin's hand and allowed Luz to slap her on the back. "Is this all of you?"

"So far," Luz said, waving at her to join them on the steps. "Guys keep wandering in every half-hour or so. They dumped our asses all over Normandy, it looks like."

"Any wounded?"

"Popeye got shot through the ass when we took the big guns at Brecourt yesterday," Malarkey said. "Damn shame, did you see him when you were getting stitched up?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I do not remember much from yesterday, or the day before." She rolled a piece of broken stone under her boot and frowned. "It has been chaotic."

"We didn't think we were ever gonna see you again when you left England," said Perconte, and Martin slapped him upside the helmet. "What? We didn't!"

"Don't fucking tell her that, Frank," said Luz, waving his cigarette. "No one wants to hear that. But seriously, kid, what have you been up to? And what's with this hat?"

"It's a beret," she said, dodging his attempt to knock it off her head. "I was fighting with the Free French, they gave it to me. And I have been hiding in a brewery waiting for you all to get here."

Liebgott snorted. "Yeah, we knew that part," he said, sitting down by her feet. He dug around in his pocket and pulled out a tattered poster, the one that the Germans has plastered on walls across town, and she rolled her eyes as the men whistled at her deranged photograph. "'Wanted for murder, treason, aiding the enemy and the Jews, and betraying the German state'," he read, squinting at the German letters. He grinned as he passed the poster to Luz, who held it up to the sunlight. "Sounds like you were busy."

"Fill us in," Toye said, knocking her shoulder. "Unless it's secret."

"It is not a secret anymore," she said, leaning back and scratching lightly at her stitches. "I just told the officers, I am sure that you can know as well."

And she closed her eyes in the sunshine and leaned back against the steps and started speaking, telling them about how they were diverted from The Netherlands and landed in Belgium, how they bought a truck and caravanned down the coast, the way she had almost been taken by three Gestapo officers as soon as she had arrived in Mere-Eglise. She told them about Benoit's pub and what it was like to live in a brewery, how she killed four men from the rooftop, how she had killed even more when sabotaging the guns on the coast. They didn't need her to tell them about finding men in the forest and single-handedly attacking machine guns, or slitting throats while running down the roads at night, but she told them anyway, and when she opened her eyes they were all staring at her, completely horrified.

"And you got shot twice and didn't even stop to pull out the bullets?" Liebgott asked, and she shook her head. "Are you crazy?"

She raised her eyebrows and shrugged. "I had no time."

Luz was chain-smoking and shaking his head. "Jesus, that's almost as crazy as what Speirs did yesterday," he said, looking over at Malarkey. "I'm sure Malark would love to tell you about that."

She rotated her head over towards Malarkey, who looked as if the last thing he wanted to do was talk about Speirs. He glanced around the square, making sure there were no officers in sight before leaning towards them. "Look, I don't really want to talk about it in the open, you never know where he is..."

"You can tell me later," she said. She didn't really care what the men had done in order to get to this point. Speirs had probably been the first to kill someone - she remembered the way she had felt horrified when she saw a soldier in Berlin shoot a civilian after he refused to vacate his home. It had turned her stomach. No doubt the men had seen him shoot someone up-close.

"Let's go, first platoon!" shouted Welsh from across the square, and Karolina watched him take a swig from his canteen. She pushed herself up on her elbows, and then gladly accepted a hand from Luz as she rose up onto her feet.

Ella was walking towards them from a building down the row, her pack on her shoulders and holding an armful of Karolina's things as she strode towards their group. "I cleaned your gun," she said, dumping Karolina's pack, M1, and helmet into Karolina's arms. "It was disgusting - blood and mud everywhere, ugh."

"How ya doin', doll?" Guarnere said, ambling up to stand next to Karolina and giving Ella the eye. "Invade France often?"

Ella blinked at him before smiling widely, her white teeth bright against the grime on her face. "No," she said, "It's my first time." She rolled her eyes and walked away, and Karolina couldn't help but chuckle. She slid the pack onto her good shoulder and loaded a round into her M1 as Guarnere slapped his hand on his thigh.

"' _Invade France often?_ '" Karolina said under her breath, and Luz laughed at the glare Guarnere sent her way. "That was terrible."

He followed her as they walked towards Welsh. "You're her friend," he said, his eyes following Ella as she walked down the street towards Fox Company. "What do I gotta do to get her to go on a date with me?"

Karolina shrugged. "Make her some Italian food? Get her an American visa?" she said. "I am not one to give advice about romance."

"Easy's moving out, on your feet!" Welsh hollered towards the stragglers, and Karolina squinted at him. "Nixon was asking for you at HQ, I think they need a map of Carentan," he said, and she nodded at him before turning in the opposite direction and following Ella's path down the street.

"Catch up with us later, huh?" said Toye, and she patted him on the arm as she passed.

"No worries, I will find you," she said. "You all are not hard to miss."

"That's for sure," replied Guarnere as he was herded down the road with the rest of the men.

* * *

Ron watched Karolina walk her fingertips over the map of Carentan on the table in front of them, and then watched Buck stare intently at her face whenever the man thought she wasn't looking. At one point, the lieutenant placed his finger near the same location Karolina pointed to, and Ron noted the amount of space between their hands. If Buck moved any closer, he would lose that finger.

Buck was transparent. He wore every emotion on his face, was too open with the men, expressed himself when he felt like it regardless of whether or not it was appropriate of an officer to do so. He was tall and popular with the ladies in Upottery and laughed loudly and knew that he was charming. He had tried to be charming with Medvedeva the day before, and she had nearly broken his nose. Clearly, he had not learned his lesson - when he placed his hand on Karolina's shoulder, she had nearly stabbed him in the hand. It didn't escape Ron's notice that she had threatened him with the knife he had given her. That had given him a burn of satisfaction despite the fact that he had been about to shoot Buck in the kneecap.

"It's fortified up to the tops of the buildings," Nixon was saying. "There's no way to infiltrate the town center in a way that won't alert the Krauts. They have their eye on every entrance."

"How do you enter a town without anyone noticing?" Ella posited aloud. "Under? Not possible. Over? Not right now."

"In a wooden horse?" said Katya with a smirk.

Karolina chewed on their lip. "What sort of artillery do they have in the town?"

"A few 105's and no tanks," Nixon said, unfurling another map. "Dick found this map while we were assaulting Brecourt Manor, has every German gun along the coastline on it."

Karolina snatched it out of his hands. "Are you joking?" she said under her breath. " _Wo war das vor einer Woche?_ " She grabbed a pencil from the table and squinted down at the map, the ends of her hair dusting the paper, and began to cross off guns rapidly. "These are gone," she said, crossing off five pinpricks on the coast. "If Claude is not dead, I will kill him anyway." She scooted the paper over to Winters, who looked down on the remaining guns. "We could try to infiltrate the town tonight and blow up their weapons, if needed."

"They'd see you coming," Ron said. "They're on a hill. No way to take the roads without alerting them."

She met his gaze and nodded slowly, her eyes blank as she thought quickly. "So, we will attack in the morning? And then the three of us will use shock tactics."

"It's the only chance we have of taking the town," Winters said, clearly displeased. "We just have to strike early and hope we can drive them out."

Karolina nodded and checked the scope on her M1. "We three can go in first," she said. "Create some chaos, find the snipers, take them out. Then you can follow."

"I'm sorry," said Buck, holding up a hand. "You all are gonna storm Carentan, alone, and then we'll follow?" He seemed perplexed, and Ron gave him a cold stare. "I mean, you all seem tough, but no one is that tough."

The women stared at him for a moment, silent, as if they were trying to decide if he was serious. Katya drummed her fingernails on the table. "You don't think we can do it? After all of this?"

Buck seemed to regret voicing his opinion. "I just think it's implausible," he said, but he didn't sound certain. The women kept their faces neutral but shared looks of utter distaste.

"We don't do the  _plausible_ ," Katya said with a sneer. "We do the things that normal men like you refuse to do."

"We'll adopt the plan if it is needed," said Winters, breaking up the tense conversation. "But for tonight, the agents will go with us as we make our way there. They know this land better than any of us."

Karoline smiled softly at Winters and nodded. "It would be a nice change, having company during a nighttime walk," she said, and Nixon laughed. They seemed to be over the little spat they had that afternoon. Ron made a mental note to ask Nixon about that later.

"Well, let's get moving," Winters said, rolling up the maps. "Welsh has already mustered up Easy's platoons and they're moving out ahead of us. Safe to assume that any men you don't have by now are not showing up."

Ron nodded as the men filed out of the room and watched as Karolina replaced the scope on the top of her gun with one that was green in color. "What is that?" he asked, and she looked up at him as if she had forgotten he was there.

"It is something the SOE dropped on us last week," she said, handing him the hourglass-shaped sighter. "It helps you see targets in the dark. Want to see?"

"Sure," he said, and she walked over to the gas lamp on the table and blew it out; the room went black instantly, and suddenly his arms were covered in goosebumps as he felt Karolina's presence shift around him in the dark. Ron blinked as his pupils adjusted to the lack of light, and then held up the scope to his eye, feeling slightly foolish.

"Can you see anything?" she asked in front of him, and he could, as improbable as it seemed. He could faintly make out her profile in the room as she gathered her pack from the floor and picked up her gun. He kept the scope trained on her as she cracked her neck and rubbed at her head.

"How does this work?" he said, moving towards the door and away from her before he lowered the scope from his eye and did something stupid, like trying to grab her hand in the dark. Out in the open things were more distinct, the natural light from the dusk illuminating the shapes of the buildings around him, and Karolina walked out of the building and stood beside him.

"It's painted with radium," she said, plucking the scope from his hands. "It could be perfected, but nothing the SOE sends us is ever perfect." She screwed the scope to the top of the gun and shouldered it before walking down the road towards the other officers. Ron fell into step with her, and he listened to her groan as she tried to adjust the pack to where it didn't put weight on her arm. He would carry the pack for her, if she became more uncomfortable, but he knew that if he offered she'd be entirely offended.

They walked in silence for a while, trying to catch up with the other officers who had a good thirty-yard lead in front of them, and Ron looked over at her every other minute just to make sure that she was actually there. He had woven himself into such a strange narrative in his head, one where he would bushwhack through France and find her, and now that he had found her, he didn't quite know where the story he had started was going. She didn't feel real. He had been fighting the urge to touch her since he had held her feet down on the makeshift operating table. He knew that everything about that urge was uncalled for and more than inappropriate, but it was there. He wanted an excuse to put an arm around her shoulders, to brush the hair out of her face, and he shoved his hands deep into his pockets. If he could only pat her on the shoulder, then she would feel more real.

But she was real, and she was walking beside him, her hand resting on the strange pistol on her belt, her eyes darting back and forth across the road in front of them, taking it all in. She caught his eye the next time he looked at her, and she tilted her head. "What?" she said.

"What?" he replied.

"Why are you looking at me?"

He shrugged. "Making sure you're walking okay," he replied. It wasn't the truth, but he'd never tell her the truth, anyway. He was losing it.

"My side feels better," she said, patting her ribs. "How about you?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Are you okay?" she said. She sounded as if she meant it. He hoped that she had meant it.

"I'm fine," he said. "There's nothing wrong with me."

"That's good," she said. "I am happy you made it here, in one piece."

He looked at her and fought the smile threatening to emerge onto his face. "I've been wondering for a month if you were alright," he said. When did he get so bold? "The men told me what you did while we were landing. You could have gotten killed."

She shrugged a little too casually for his liking, as if she had considered the fact that she could have died and decided it wasn't the worst outcome. "I did it for all of you," she said with a glint in her eye. "I couldn't let you down." She squinted at him through the darkness. "Did you do something to Malarkey?" she asked, changing the subject rapidly.

He blinked. "What do you mean?" he said, again.

"You did something to scare him," she said, looking at him. "What was it?"

He had almost forgotten. In all the chaos of the day, from fighting at Brecourt Manor to rounding up the stragglers of Fox Company and looking for her, the fact that he had killed ten German prisoners had nestled itself into the back of his mind. He didn't want to tell her about it. At the time it had felt good, had felt right, and he had imagined that she would be proud of him before realizing that she, too, was German, and though she had shown no love for any Nazi soldiers before, he didn't know if she'd approve of him slaughtering ten unarmed prisoners. He tightened his grip around the strap of his Thompson and shrugged. "Don't know," he said, and his voice sounded cold, even to him.

"You can tell me," she said, looking earnest. "I am the last person to judge anyone on their actions."

"There's nothing to tell," he said harshly. "I don't know what Malarkey is talking about."

Karolina raised an eyebrow and turned away. "No matter," she said, no change in her tone but her face had dropped slightly, and Ron wanted to dissolve into the air. She picked up her pace and hurried forward to join Winters and Nixon, and he let her go. For the next few miles, Ron hung back and listened to her whisper to Nixon, an icy feeling invading his stomach. She would find out eventually, and she would hate him. And then he might as well just find a little fishing boat, make his way down to Juno Beach, and row himself back to England.

* * *

Things had begun to get messy.

The men had gotten lost three times while marching through the night, Perconte was nabbing wristwatches off of dead Germans, and nearly every piece of metal had caught fire, emitting a noxious smoke that stank of petrol and chemicals and irritated everyone's eyes. Karolina's eyes were bloodshot, and her skin felt itchy, whether from the mosquito bites or the lack of Pervitin, she didn't know. She had run out of her personal stash and would have to tolerate the feeling until she could return to her trunk and get more.

Ella grabbed her hand from where she scratched at her arm. "Stop," she said, holding on tightly. "Look what you are doing." Her nails throbbed, and Karolina saw that she had scratched through her skin and drawn blood to the surface. She lowered her hand and shoved it in her pocket, shrugging off Ella's concern.

They were crouching on the street that led into Carentan, out of range from the snipers that were definitely inside the building facing the road. Karolina had crawled into the line of bushes beside the road to try to get a good look at what would be waiting for them as soon as they approached the town. She couldn't see anything, but she could bet that the Germans saw them.  _Textbook stealth position_.

"I hate this," said Katya from behind them. Glass clinked on glass, and Karolina turned to find her screwing lids onto three bottles filled with a dark liquid. The Russian carefully draped a piece of soaked cloth into one of the bottles and held it out to Ella. "Cocktail?"

Ella raised the bottle in salute and tucked it under her arm. "These stink," she said. "What did you put inside?"

"Petrol," she said. "I used to put in chlorine also, before. But that is illegal now, or so they say."

It was so quiet that Karolina could hear the wind blowing the shutters on the building nearest them, the squeak of the rusty hinge an ominous reminder that they were expected. Up ahead, Winters peeked over the hill and muttered to Welsh, and Karolina cracked her neck and checked her ammo. Welsh turned to wave at his platoon, and the men rose up and quickly scurried over the hill.

Winters moved down the column of men, ushering them forward, and Welsh was halfway down the road when Karolina heard a shout from inside the town. A machine gun began to fire upon them head on, and the men that had been on their way down the road dove for the ditches.

"Cover me!" said Katya, and Karolina rose up with her M1 as the angry Russian leapt up from the grass and jumped into the road. She paused to flick open her lighter and ignite the end of the cloth from the Molotov cocktail, and then she was running down the road, weaving back and forth until she reached the bottom of the hill. Karolina raised the rifle to her shoulder and fired into the windows randomly, hoping that she had deterred someone from shooting at the Russian, and watched as Katya reared back and threw the cocktail into the open window on the first floor.

There was an explosion of flame inside the building, illuminating the dark interior for a few seconds, and panicked shouts came from the building as its occupants realized that their hideout was on fire. Karolina watched as Luz and Welsh were pinned down by a machine gun from the top of another building, and she reloaded and rose up from her concealed position. She saw Winters standing in the middle of the road, ignoring the bullets spraying around him, and she dashed towards him and jumped over a man cowering in a ditch.

Winters met her gaze in the split second between the moment her feet hit the gravel and the next, in which she decided to run down the hill towards Katya, who had broken into the smoking building and was exchanging gunfire with the soldiers on the top floor. He seemed startled, as if he had forgotten that she was here to fight, too, and reached out a hand to her, as if to grab her and prevent her from going forward, but she weaved around him and ran straight into the gunfire.

She heard the men shout behind her as she ran towards the building on fire, and she shot through the windows on the bottom floor as an extra precaution before pausing to lean up against the side of the building. Luz looked at her from across the street, flabbergasted. "What the fuck are you doing?" he yelled, and she shrugged before she turned and slipped inside the burning building.

Karolina heard scuffles as she crept up the stairs, and then took the steps two at a time when she heard Katya yelling in Russian at the top of her lungs. She emerged onto the second floor to see Katya pushing a dead German out of the window, five bodies lying on the floor in front of her. Katya looked over at Karolina as she wiped the blood splatter off of her face.

"Hurry, before the fire catches," she said, and Karolina helped her lug the machine gun facing the road to the opposite window. She could tell that the Germans inside the town had yet to realize that their outpost building had been compromised, and Karolina watched as the enemy soldiers scrambled through the buildings across from them. Perched on top of a pharmacy, a sniper began to fire quick rounds down on the street below, and the panicked shouts of the men below drifted upwards towards them.

"Target the snipers, I will get the men in the windows," Katya said gruffly, and for once, Karolina did what the Russian told her to do. She caught the German in her scope and squeezed her trigger, knocking him backwards and out of sight. Katya braced the machine gun on the window sill and fired into the windows across the street, alerting every German soldier to their presence. Karolina ducked as she heard the familiar whizz of live ammo firing in their direction, and Katya winced as the wooden window splintered in the air above them.

Karolina didn't wait to be given any more instructions - with an apologetic look at Katya, she slid across the floor towards the stairs and pushed herself up when she reached the first step down. The smoke had filled the stairwell, and she covered her nose with the sleeve of her shirt as she ran down the stairs and back into the open, where she saw that most of the men had made it into the town, except for Welsh and Luz, who were still pinned down by one machine gunner in the building down the street.

Luz saw Karolina emerge from the building and began to shout something at her, but she didn't catch it as she turned the corner and began to fire wildly in the direction of the machine gunner. A second passed before the street in front of the machine gunner's hideout exploded into dust and rubble, and she dashed across the road to meet them.

"You crazy son of a bitch!" Welsh was screaming at her, or at Luz, she couldn't quite tell, but she nodded at him before she slid down the wall and began to fire at yet another machine gunner across the road, ignoring Luz as he tried to drag her backwards behind the protective wall.  _How many machine gunners could one company have?_

Whoever the latest machine gunner was targeting was screaming bloody murder, and Welsh set his jaw and nodded at the both of them. "Give me some covering fire!" he said, unhooking a grenade from his jacket. Luz stopped trying to pull her in his direction and joined her in the street instead, firing haphazardly in the direction of the machine gunner's window as Welsh ran down the street towards the enemy gunner.

Karolina didn't see Welsh pull the pin, but she heard the resulting explosion and hoped that Welsh had thrown the grenade through the window before it had detonated. When the smoke cleared, she saw Welsh crouching down beneath the sill, and she reloaded her rifle.

She caught Luz's eye before she stood up and hurried down the road to the newly cleared street, and then she saw it - on top of the building where the machine gunner had been causing so much grief stood a water tank, one with a flat roof.  _Perfect._ She kicked in the door with her heel and scooted into the foyer of the building, waiting for someone to fire at her before she advanced further, but nothing happened. Instead, a headless German soldier lay in the parlor, and she tried not to look at the stump of his neck as she crept through the room and up the back stairs.

* * *

Ron was running through the streets of Carentan when a German soldier emerged from a smoking building and charged at him, a bayonet knife raised to the sky and tight in his grip, and before he had the moment to pull the trigger on his rifle, a crack rang out around him and the German's throat exploded in a burst of blood. Ron dropped to the cobblestones and edged along the lower wall of the building, looking for the assailant, but he couldn't see anyone on the street that could have shot the man. It was only when a Kraut fell from the top of the building across the street from him did he think to look up, and when he did, he saw a lone figure flat on its stomach on top of a water tank, taking out all the snipers on the block.

He knew it was Karolina - no one was that limber, that creative to think of getting to the highest point possible and eliminating the enemy from an unconquerable vantage point. He watched as her elbow jutted out to the side, readjusting her grip, and he found himself grinning despite the chaos around him.

"Houses on the right!" someone yelled, and he snapped out of his daze. He noticed Malarkey and Hoobler smashing in windows down the street, and he hustled towards them, directing the incoming men to penetrate deeper into the town.  _He didn't have to worry about Karolina_ , he told himself, but the urge to look back and watch her in her element plucked at his determination.

Down the street, Luz hesitated at the threshold of a doorway, and Abruzza came running around the corner. "Give them to me!" she yelled, and Ron watched as a petrified French family came crawling out of the house, flinching at the gunfire. Ella scooped up the youngest child into her arms and began running in Ron's direction as a mother and grandfather followed her on foot, the eldest child beside them. He intercepted Abruzza just as she was about to take the wrong turn down a street that led deeper into the town.

"Take the next left," he hollered over the sound of a bazooka plowing through a cement wall, and the Italian nodded, her eyes relieved as she led the family to safety. Ron watched them go before jogging to catch up with the rest of his men.

He looked upwards, trying to catch sight of Karolina again, but he saw nothing but the water tank. She must have moved on to another building, or maybe she was hiding behind the tank where he couldn't see.  _Maybe she had gotten hit and fallen off of the tank and fallen off of the roof to the rubble below and was bleeding out -_ he shook his head, trying to clear his mind, but it didn't work. A rogue German stumbled down the street towards him, and he shot the man in the chest, not even feeling the kickback from his rifle. Only the sound of incoming artillery awoke him from his haze, and when it did, he realized that they were fucked.

Lipton had seemed to catch on quickly. He stood in the street, waving his hand, pushing men down the road. "They've got us zeroed!" he screamed, and then the street exploded in front of him, knocking him on his back. Ron was too preoccupied getting out of the street to notice exactly where the artillery was firing, but as he heard the unmistakable sound of a building exploding into bits, he turned around as he knelt by Lipton's side.

He had time to watch the water tank explode into a spray of vapor before the roof, the one where Karolina had chosen as her hideout, buckled and fell in on the topmost floor. There was a brief moment of stillness before the entire building groaned as if it were alive, and before Ron could do or say anything, anything that could make time freeze or stop the inevitable from occurring, the upper half of the building slid sideways and crumbled down to the street below in a crash that shook him off his feet and down to the cobblestones underneath his boots.


	16. Fallout

Chapter Sixteen

Fallout

_Normandy, France_

_June 1944_

 

Karolina was thinking about Dieter Werner as she lay on top of the water tank. It was strange, the places the mind went to in the height of stress, the people it conjured up when the eye refused to see a man's arm explode into pieces. She reloaded and took a new angle for her aim on the German gunner perched in a window downwind, clutching his arm in horror, and she thought about stupid Dieter Werner, who had cut off her braid in the orphanage and carried it around like a trophy.

 _He had done it at night, when Philippe couldn't protect her, and she hadn't realized anything was wrong until she had woken to the sounds of cruel laughter from the other children, and she had reached up a hand on instinct to rub her eyes but had found loose clippings of hair, and when she ran the hand behind her head and realized what she was missing, she had screamed, and the idiot children had laughed harder, and the nuns had taken a stick to the back of_ her  _legs for 'making such a fuss so early in the day'..._

Down below, a German emerged from a building, a knife in the air with every intent to stab the man in front of him, and Karolina shot through his neck without a second thought. She turned her attention back to the road in front of her and focused on discerning the green fatigues from the tan. It was hard to see with all the smoke, and the grenades being thrown left and right weren't doing her any favors.

 _And she had seen Dieter in Berlin, and he had cornered her at her office and asked her to go get some coffee with him, and when she hadn't recognized him he had laughed and tugged on her short hair and said_ 'I like to think I was the one who inspired you to keep it cropped' _, she had remembered his mean-spirited laughter and punched him in the face..._

Men were so strange.

A shot pinged off of the metal tank, inches away from her face, and she jerked sideways on instinct and fell onto the rubble-strewn rooftop, landing on her stitches. She gasped aloud before she could stop herself, the pain too searing to keep her mouth shut, and she rolled onto her back and lay still for a moment. Her hand traveled down to her side, feeling for any sign of wetness, any indicator that her stitches had burst, but she only felt searing heat and pushed herself up on her elbows. She grabbed her rifle and groaned as she turned over on her hands and knees and crawled over to the fire escape attached to the side of the building.

If she had been paying better attention to what was happening, maybe she would have heard Lipton shouting the word 'zeroed' and comprehended just what that meant  _before_  the water tank exploded in a burst of steam and drenched her from head to toe. Karolina sputtered as she wiped the water out of her eyes and heard the unmistakable high-pitched whistling sound that told her she'd better get off of the roof, and fast. She had only put one foot on the ladder leading down the side of the building before she felt the entire upper floor shift beside her, and before she could react, the roof caved in and she lost her grip on the rusty metal rung.

She hit the landing below before she could brace for impact, and her head snapped painfully as her forehead took in the brunt force of the metal grating. Her ears rung and her vision went white but she heard the noise of the building crumbling behind a wall of pain, and she threaded her fingers through the grating underneath her, hoping that the building wouldn't collapse on top of her. If it did, it would hardly be more painful than what she was feeling now. She turned over on her back and lay on the landing, gasping for air through her mouth, wondering if her nose had been ripped off of her face. She couldn't feel a damn thing below her collarbone.

 _Atmen,_ said the voice in her head, and she obeyed, taking in a breath through her mouth and exhaling, trying to get her breathing under control. The building shook a second time, and a crashing noise louder than anything she had heard before reverberated around her as the metal scaffolding shook wildly, and she braced herself for the sensation of falling three stories to her death.

It was a bad way to die. She had expected death at every moment, of course, but she had always hoped for something quick. She should have known, though - she deserved a slow death, the way she had lived her life, the way she had killed.

The scaffolding shook harder, and suddenly, someone was kneeling beside her, cursing wildly under their breath. "Fuck, fuck,  _oh fuck,_ " they said, and even though it felt wrong on her face, she smiled.

"Bill," she said, letting go of the metal and reaching out a hand, and he grabbed her fingers and gave them a squeeze. "I hit my head."

"I can see that," he said, his voice shaky. "You're cut up real bad, doll." Karolina reached up with her other hand to investigate the damage, but he caught that one too and held both of her hands tightly in his grip. "Don't touch, it 'll make it worse."

"It hurts," she said simply. "Is my nose still there, on my face? It feels like  _meine Nase ist weg, ich kann durch sie nicht atmen..._ " Her head swam, and she tried to switch back to English, but her brain was only going forward in German. She wanted to see what was happening - the blood on her face had pooled into the corners of her eyes, though, and the moment she attempted to open them, they stung like a bitch. She hissed and sat up, sensing Bill close by her face.

"I don't understand a damn word ya saying," he said, rising to his feet and pulling her up with him. "You must be all scrambled up in there, you get me?"

" _Ja_ ," she said quietly, taking a tentative step forward. Bill threw her arm around his shoulder and guided her down the stairs, telling her when to step down and stopping when her equilibrium failed her. Karolina couldn't believe that this was happening to her  _again_. Roe was going to be livid.

"Hey Muck, come on and give me a hand over here, will ya?" Bill called out once their feet hit the street below them. Karolina heard boots crunching through the rubble and Skip's sharp intake of breath when he saw her face.

 _"You really know how to make a lady feel special,"_ she said under her breath, and then she laughed weakly, patting Skip's forearm as he hooked it around her arm.

"What the fuck is she saying?" Skip asked.

"Don't know, she bashed the shit out of her head, though," Bill replied. "Think she can only speak German right now."

They led her through the street, her inability to see throwing off her understanding of time - it felt as if they had been walking for hours, and she desperately wanted to reach out and grab onto a wall to make sure that she wasn't hallucinating. Karolina felt the silence that fell around her as she passed other men, and she tried to envision herself through their eyes. What did they see? It wouldn't be too terrible of a thing if her face was disfigured, or if she was left with nasty scars - it didn't matter much to anyone what she looked like, and she wasn't vain, or at least that's what she told herself. But the idea of a chunk of flesh missing from her face made her stomach turn over on itself, and she thought she would gag if she pressed a hand to her cheek and found a protruding jawbone where smooth skin used to be.

They entered a building, and the noise around them stopped for a split second before she felt the breeze of someone passing her close at hand. "On the table next to Lieutenant Winters,  _now_ ," Roe said, his voice angry but quiet, and Bill and Skip gently pushed her back until her legs hit a wooden ledge. Bill helped her up while Skip whispered in the corner with someone she couldn't identify, and Karolina walked her hands down the table and slid sideways until she was resting with her temple pressed to the cool wood.

She felt gentle hands exploring her face. "Are you doing this on purpose?" Roe said above her, his voice strained. "Are you trying to get shot to pieces?"

" _Nein,_ " she sighed, moaning when he pressed down on a tender spot under her eye. "Ach."

"Why is she speaking German?" said the voice of Winters above her.

"She knocked her head pretty hard, sir," Bill said. "I found her on the metal fire escape on the building that exploded. I saw her fall and tried to get her before the whole thing came down on her."

"Can you open your eyes?" asked Roe, and Karolina pressed her fingertips to her eyelids before opening her eyes gingerly. The blood that had dripped down her face had dried, and everything was covered in a thin white haze, but she could make out the concerned faces of Bill, Skip, Roe and Winters staring down at her. "Good," Roe said, wringing out a wet rag and wiping it gently down her face. "One less thing to worry about."

" _Is it bad?"_ she asked, and then grimaced as Roe touched her forehead, only then feeling the deep cut that stretched from her right eyebrow to her hairline. "Fuck."

Winters smiled despite himself. "And there's the English," he said, patting her on the shoulder. "You have to stop giving the commanding officers heart attacks."

Roe slammed down a needle and some thread beside her, his face pinched and red. "I wanna go one day without having to stitch you up," he said. "Now you better lay still. This is gonna hurt."

* * *

Ron was getting sick and tired of loitering outside of the medical buildings, trying to look like he was busy with a legitimate task rather than desperately searching for some sign that Karolina was physically fine, but it seemed as if she was establishing a pattern. He kicked at a loose brick and tried to act as if he had some sort of ailment that required medical attention.

He had seen Winters limping out of the building earlier and hid his agitation well when the man came up to brief him on the town's status. "We expect a counter-attack," he said to Ron, squinting into the middle distance. "Carentan's as important to them as it is to us." He motioned behind him at the dark interior of the building. "And we caught some casualties, mostly walking wounded - how is Abruzza?"

Ron blinked. "Fine. She was evacuating natives to the back."  _Was Abruzza missing?_

Winters nodded. "Medvedeva's in there, has some nasty burns from the fire she started," he said, glancing behind him. "Schütze took a battering, too." He turned back to Ron and shrugged. "The men need to step it up, carry equal weight. If this is the way they fight every battle, then they aren't gonna make it through the war."

"What's wrong with Schütze?" he said, catching himself before he called her 'Karolina'. It felt so wrong now to call her by her last name.  _Impersonal, cold, distant._

"Nasty cut to the forehead, came in drenched in blood. It looked worse than it was, but she banged her head pretty badly and was speaking German for most of the time Doc was stitching her up." Winters adjusted his helmet and nodded at Ron before he walked back into the town, no doubt in search of Nixon. Ron felt his skin go cold, and he had leaned against the dirty wall, trying to remain calm.

Ten minutes had passed. He knew he wouldn't leave until he had seen her, even though he desperately wanted to keep up his facade of not-caring around the other men. He had a reputation to uphold now, and the sight of one of their lieutenants kneeling by the bedside - or _table side_  - of a German spy just wouldn't do.  _But you know you're going to knock down the walls to find her if you don't go in._ He glanced inside the building, seeing that the activity inside had quelled, and he walked in casually, scanning the little makeshift operating rooms for her form, her shadow, listening for her voice.

"I just wanted to apologize," said the deep baritone of Buck Compton, and Speirs exhaled through his nose. If he turned the corner and found Compton sitting by her side, closer than necessary...

"I accept it," said Karolina, her voice weak, and his chest constricted. "It is a shock, for most men, when they first begin to interact with us... I understand."

"Still, I crossed a boundary, without asking," Buck said, sounding bashful. Ron rounded the corner and found him standing next to Karolina's table, holding a cold rag in one hand and patting her knee with the other. He stood there for a moment, unnoticed by the two of them, the jealousy eating him alive until he took a deep breath and walked forward, and their eyes turned his way. Buck snatched his hand away from Karolina's leg as if he had been burnt, and he took a step back from her table before nodding politely to the both of them and nearly jogging from the room.

Karolina pressed the rag to her neck and looked back at Ron from where she was reclining. "You really are going to give him a panic attack," she said lightly, but he could see a devious glint in her eyes. He thought of something clever to say, but the words died in his throat as he took in her battered face and dazed expression.

He walked forward and rested a hand on the table near her elbow, taking in her bloodied bandage and bruises around her nose, forcing any remnant of Buck's presence out of the room. "I wish you would stop hurting yourself," he said, his planned words fading from his memory, as they always did when he was around her. A single speck of blood remained near her cheekbone, and he stared at it, his mind replaying the image of Buck's hand on her leg.  _Don't let him win,_ his ego whispered, and before he could talk himself out of it, he swiped his thumb across her skin and wiped the blood away.

Karolina's body went rigid with the contact, and he drew back quickly, his hand tingling as if he had been electrocuted.  _Stupid, stupid, stupid,_ his brain was chanting at him, and he was frozen in place, glued to the ground by the bottom of his boots as Karolina's pupils narrowed, calculating and deconstructing his actions to the minute detail. He somehow found a way to move his feet and turned to go, turned to flee and never show his face again, when she stuck out her hand and grabbed onto his arm.

"No," she said, and he stopped. He looked back at her and found that she had sat up, although he couldn't remember seeing her rise from the table, but there she was, refusing to let him leave, and he could have died on the spot.

"You always run away," she said, and then she wobbled. He gave himself permission to put a hand on her back, to steady her, hoping she wouldn't flinch away from him. She blinked hard, inhaling slowly from her nose. "Please, can you help me back down?"

He slipped an arm around her shoulder, taking in the feel of her jacket and the bones under her skin, the way her body shook as he lowered her back down to the table. She settled her head on a discarded jacket stained with blood and dirt, and he began to take off his own to serve as a better pillow before she reached out a hand and stopped him.

"I am fine," she said, and he scoffed. She smiled at the sound and closed her eyes. "I was hoping you would come find me. It is a tradition."

"Tradition?" he said, leaning over her. He brushed his fingers over the bandage that covered her forehead, still processing the fact that he could touch her, that she was letting him, that she needed his help. Her forehead felt hot, and he wondered if anyone had a thermometer.

"You are always at my bedside," she said. "I expect to see your face hovering above me when I look up."

"I don't want that to be a tradition," he said, his voice tight. "I don't like seeing you wounded."

She sighed, shaking her head minutely. "Blame the Germans," she said. "I do not enjoy getting shot, or thrown off a building, or breaking an arm..." Her eyes were flickering back and forth, watching something he couldn't see in the air above them, but she turned to look at him then, studying his face. "Are you okay?"

"Stop asking me if I'm okay," he said.  _When did she break an arm?_ "I'm not the one on the table."

"I have to make sure," she said, looking behind his shoulder towards the door that led to the street. "I have to make sure everyone is safe."

 _Except for yourself,_ he wanted to say, but he held it back. This was the longest he'd ever spoken to her, the only time when their words hadn't been barbed with quick insults and insinuations. And that was mostly his fault, he knew, but he didn't want to remind her that he had been more than unnecessarily rude to her, so he hooked his foot around the leg of a chair nearby and dragged it towards him. There were things he needed to do, people he needed to yell at, but they could wait.

She was watching him carefully, something she wanted to say on the tip of her tongue, but she seemed to change her mind and smiled instead. "Buck is terrified of you," she said.

He pursed his lips then, the memory of Compton's hand on Karolina imprinting itself into his vision. "I don't know why," he lied, and she snorted.

"Oh, you don't?" she said with a raised eyebrow. "Perhaps it is the way you look at him like you want to eviscerate him at any moment."

Ron shrugged. "He doesn't respect personal space," he said simply.

She poked his arm where it rested on the table. "He was apologizing to me, before you walked in and scared him," she said with a grin. "He says he wants to be my friend." Ron scoffed at that and shook his head, and she furrowed her brow. "What?"

"He doesn't want to  _be your friend_ ," Ron said derisively.  _Not in a million years, not with him acting so polite and giving her those little grins and looking at her like that._

Karolina raised an eyebrow. "Oh, really?" She looked genuinely confused. "Then what?"

"No man wants to be  _friends_ with a woman, not like that," he said.

"Nixon's my friend," she said, her face wrinkled in thought. "And Winters is."

"That is different. He's looking at you like you're something to eat," Ron said, shoving up from the chair.

She laughed then, really laughed, and it was the first time he had ever heard her let go of her rigid demeanor and the sound almost made him forget what they were talking about, but then she wiped her eyes and shook her head. "I don't believe it. He is just scared of me, and of you. And  _you_!" She laughed again. "You look like you want to kill me every day! So, what does that mean, eh?"

Ron snatched up his helmet and planted it on his head. "I don't want to kill you!" he said, raising his voice. He felt his face turning red and he pointed down at her. "I want you to stay alive, you hear me?"

Karolina's laughter followed him as he stomped out of the medical building. " _Ja,_ sure!" she called behind him, and he gripped his pistol tightly in his hand as he fought a smile from breaking out on his face.  _Crazy fucking Kraut._

* * *

Karolina gave herself an additional thirty minutes of rest after Ron had left before she deemed it fine for her to sit up and venture outside. She didn't mind being alone, especially after those two men had bombarded her while she was still dizzy and a little loopy from the morphine Roe had given her.

Buck had appeared out of nowhere, telling her that she had taken out a soldier who had nearly killed him, apologizing for being so forward, wanting to make peace and wanting her to know that he had her back. It was very straightforward and took her off-guard, but she had accepted his apologies and he had patted her knee reassuringly as her forehead throbbed painfully. And then she had looked up to find him staring in fear at someone who had entered her little corner of the building, and she wasn't at all surprised when Buck ran for his life as Speirs entered the room. And something had happened when he had stepped into the light - he had looked so angry, so very, very angry at Buck, and as she lay there all she could do was look at his face.  _Er ist so schön,_ said the voice in her head, and she had felt as if she were floating.

She shook her head lightly. It had been different, this time. She couldn't put her finger on why, on what had changed, but she hadn't let him leave, hadn't let him escape her, and it seemed to have changed things, shifted something in the air. He had been kinder to her, he was concerned, and she had let him help her.  _So strange_.  _So very strange._

She pushed herself up with the palms of her hands, and she let her brain have a moment to decompress before she opened her eyes and swung her legs off of the table. She had yet to look in a mirror, but Roe had reassured her that her nose was still attached to her face, that the cut across her forehead was nasty and that she would be bruised with all colors of the rainbow for the next week or so, but she still had an instinctual urge to look at the damage. There weren't going to be any mirrors in Carentan. She sighed and dropped to the ground, feeling the first pangs of hunger in four days. Maybe one of the men had something to eat.

The clouds of smoke had blown away to reveal another gorgeous June day, and she let herself appreciate the weather for the first time since the Invasion. Men had grouped together to rest around the town's square, and from a distance she could see Skip and Malarkey lounging on stone steps. She carefully picked her way across the rubble in the streets, listening to the gunfire in the distance and waving away flies that buzzed lazily towards her bandaged head.

"Berlin by Christmas is how I see it," Alton Moore said, reclining against a stone step.

"You're full of it," Malarkey said dismissively.

"You will never get into Berlin," Karolina said softly, and the group of men turned towards her in surprise as she settled down slowly against the warm steps. "Not until the commanders die. They will never let Berlin go."

"If it isn't our native Berliner," Malarkey said with a smile. "Glad to see you're okay."

"I am from Hamburg," Karolina corrected. "And I am still in one piece."

Beside her, Skip tilted his head back and squirted liquefied cheese into his mouth from a tube. "Ugh, God," he said, his mouth full, sputtering. "This Kraut cheese tastes like... it stinks!"

She plucked the tube from his hands and sniffed it. "It's  _Harzer_ , of course it stinks," she said, squirting a bit on her finger and popping it into her mouth. She smiled at the familiar taste. "Mmmm." She stole a cracker out of Penkala's hand and squirted some more cheese onto it, ignoring the look of disgust Skip was giving her.

"Yes sir, the way we came into town today and took over," Moore continued, squinting into the sunlight. "You know, it don't seem like Jerry's got too much fight left in 'em."

"Hey Moore, don't get hit in the face when Jerry throws in the sponge," Malarkey said with a smirk.

"Mark my words, Mal - Berlin by Christmas," Moore said again, ignoring Karolina's remark. She laughed and leaned backwards, soaking in the sunlight.

"You all got lucky today," she said quietly, and the men stilled. "They weren't prepared for the amount of men we had. But now we've given our hand away, as they say." She opened her eyes and looked over at Skip, who was still chewing on the cheese. "They know how we fight now."

"Well, that's cheerful," Malarkey scoffed.

"Enjoy it while it lasts," said the voice of Speirs overhead, and Karolina opened her eyes to see him standing above her. "We'll be moving out soon."

"Out of town, lieutenant? Already?" questioned Moore, and the men around him stiffened. Karolina pushed herself up from her seated position, but Speirs leaned down and offered her his hand. She gave him a knowing look before grabbing his palm, reading the annoyance on his face, but he avoided her eyes. When she was steady on her feet, he dropped her hand as if it had burned him and turned to the men on the ground.

Speirs stared down at them, his face a mask of indifference. "That's right," he said softly, letting his stare sear into Alton's face before walking through the group, forcing Penkala onto his feet.

"Don't they know we're just getting settled here?" Moore asked stupidly. Speirs turned and leveled Moore with a stare.

Karolina snorted. "'Settled'?" she repeated.  _What an idiotic question_. Speirs eyes flickered in her direction before he turned on his heel and walked away without another word.

"Nice, groucho," Skip said. "Real smart. You know you're taking your life in your own hands?" Moore shrugged as he smoked his cigarette, and Skip looked over to Malarkey. "Ain't that right?"

"I told ya, I didn't actually see it," Malarkey said.

"What, Speirs shooting the prisoners, or the sergeant in his own platoon?" Penkala said.

"What, I didn't hear that one," Skip said, and Malarkey looked incredulous. "Wait he shot one of his own guys?"

Karolina leaned against the stone cross next to them, her mind racing.  _So this is what Malarkey had been talking about._ And Speirs hadn't wanted to tell her, had denied that he had done anything, but the men seemed to have plenty to talk about. It was probably just gossip, but she had long ago learned that gossip was often far closer to the truth than the truth itself. She ran her thumb over her bottom lip and willed them to forget that she was there.

"Supposedly the guy was drunk and refused to go on a patrol," said Penkala, slicing off a piece of hard cheese. "Who knows if it's true?"

"Well, I know a guy," Skip said, throwing a rock at Malarkey, who flinched and threw one back at him. "Who said that an eyewitness told him that Speirs hosed those prisoners."

"Why?" said Blithe, who Karolina had thought was asleep. "What for?"

Skip looked around before continuing, catching Karolina's eye and looking away quickly. "On D-Day, Speirs comes across this group of Kraut prisoners, digging a hole or some such, under guard and all. He breaks out a pack of smokes, passes them out - even gives them a light. Then all of a sudden, he swings up his Thompson and  _prprprpr_ ," Skip said, his fingers pointed like a gun, "he hoses them."

Karolina sucked on her teeth. "I mean, goddamn," Skip said. "Gives them smokes first? You see, that's why I don't believe he really did it."

"Oh, you don't believe it?" Malarkey challenged. "You didn't see it!" Skip retorted, but then Penkala jumped in.

"I heard he didn't do it," Alex said, but Moore shook his head.

"Oh no, it was him alright," Moore said. "But it was more than eight guys, it was more like twenty. All except for one guy, who he left alone."

"Well, all I know, from what I've heard," Penkala said. "He took that last 105 on D-Day practically by himself, running through MG fire like a maniac."

"That, I did see," Malarkey said, nodding to himself.

Karolina turned and walked back to the medical building, her mind a whirl of words and images.  _Was it true?_ Even though the men had three different versions of what could have happened, versions they whole-heartedly believed in, she didn't know which version was correct, but she did know that Ron had done  _something_. He had proven them right the moment he had brushed her off the night before. She picked up her rifle and her pack from where it lay next to her operating table and shouldered the load, pleased to feel that her stitches on her shoulder were healing.

 _Assume all of their stories are true._ She walked outside and joined the end of the tactical column, nodding at Welsh as he threw a wink her way.  _Assume he did kill prisoners of war. Why?_

There had been a "take-no-prisoners" policy for the Invasion. She hadn't stopped to ask any of the Germans she had killed if they would like to be prisoners, even when they surrendered to her.  _Assume some idiot had assembled a prisoner camp near Sainte Marie-du-Mont, and Speirs was asked to take care of them._ Or maybe he hadn't been asked at all. Maybe he had seen the group and done what no one else wanted to do, what no one else  _would_ do. It would have scared the men, it would have sent a message that he was not to be fooled with. She raised an eyebrow at that.  _You did tell them that they had to be killers._

No matter. They had all done things during the Invasion that they weren't proud of, herself included. She couldn't remember how many men she had killed - the number could be well over twenty, come to think of it.  _They would find each other later, and she would ask_. She raised an eyebrow at how natural that sounded in her head.

* * *

It seemed to Nixon that lately, everyone wanted a piece of Karolina Schütze.

He couldn't blame any of them. She was a polarizing figure. You either hated her, feared her, or were obsessed with her. He could sort every man in the company - and even a few men outside of the company - into those three categories, including himself. He wasn't afraid to admit that he was obsessed with her, although in a very different way than, for example, Ron Speirs. Nixon was worried to death about her health, her addictions, her bodily safety. Speirs looked at her as if his world was ending every time she walked away. The man had it  _bad,_ worse than Nixon had ever seen.

Nixon seemed to have a knack for being around Speirs when he let his guard down to Speirs' eternal hatred, and he had been in the back of the medical building sorting out maps and making sure all the dots aligning them with the coastline were connected when he heard Speirs tell Karolina that  _he didn't like seeing her wounded._ Nixon had carefully set down his pencils, rose up from his chair, and had shamelessly eavesdropped on their little conversation, his grin stretching wider as their words reached his ears. He knew it was only a matter of time before Speirs drove himself so crazy that he would snap and scream about his feelings.

He marched behind Karolina now, watching the way that Buck Compton leaned towards her, nearly dwarfing her with his height. Every now and then Buck would laugh quietly at something she said, even if it wasn't funny, and Nixon shook his head. The man was in deep shit - Nixon had only been on the receiving end of Speirs' glare of hatred once, and it was enough for a lifetime, but Buck didn't seem to be getting the message. Karolina was off-limits if Speirs was around. Nixon wondered if he was still the only man in the company who noticed the way Speirs looked at her - if the man was going to continue to serve as her de facto bodyguard, then it wouldn't go unnoticed for much longer.

But Speirs wasn't around right now, and Buck's interest seemed platonic and genuine on the surface. Karolina was tolerating him, at least for now. Nixon shouldered his rifle and walked towards them, tapping Malarkey beside her to take his place in the back. Don looked less than thrilled, but Nixon shouldered him out of the way and interrupted Buck's speech about his football prowess back at UCLA.

"How do you feel?" he asked, ignoring Buck's annoyed face. "You need some aspirin or something?"

"I just took some," she said, giving him a placating look. "And my stitches feel fine, and I can breathe through my nose. Progress, yes?"

"Yeah, progress you shouldn't be having to make, because you shouldn't have been up on that rooftop," Nixon said under his breath.

She rolled her eyes but conceded to his point. "There were not any other good outlooks I could reach," she said. "And the men were in the ditches, I was trying to clear the way for them."

"You did a good job," Buck volunteered, and Karolina gave him one of her miniscule smiles and Nixon sighed as Buck grinned back.

"Look, whenever we stop, we can -"

An eruption of gunfire came from their right, and Nixon grabbed Karolina's pack and pulled her to the ground with him as bullets whizzed past their ears. "Get off!" he heard Karolina say, and then she was running low through the tall grass towards the hedgerow beside them, her rifle in hand. Nixon followed her, Buck close behind, and she was already firing by the time they reached cover.

" _Du hinterhältige Bastarde_ ," she whispered to herself as she picked off a Kraut that was unfortunate enough to raise his head at the exact wrong time. "They heard us coming. We should have been quieter."

"Too late for that now," Buck said, landing beside her in the hedgerow and firing his own rifle. She picked off another straggler across the field and he inched closer to her shoulder. "Nice shot," he muttered in her ear, and Nixon sighed and crouched down low, waiting for the firing to stop so he could find Winters and let Buck dig his own deep, flirty grave.

* * *

Of course, once they had stopped to fight this new band of German renegades, the entire company had become preoccupied with digging foxholes, and once the foxholes had been dug, a storm cloud covered the horizon and a hard rain had begun to fall, turning the foxholes to mud pits and drenching everyone with a cold rain that had felt out of season for their area of France. And Karolina, who had refused to sit in mud, was perched on the side of the foxhole she had dug, staring out into the field where a chorus of German voices were floating back towards her.

They weren't singing very well - in fact, they all sounded drunk, and she flinched when a lightning bolt cracked nearby, illuminating everything around her in harsh white light. She wrapped her arms around her chest and tried to quell the shivering that seemed to radiate from her feet, up her legs, and settled in the pit of her stomach. She felt cold, which was strange, since the air around her seemed so warm.

 _Going on five days since the overdose._ She wiped rain from her eyes and blinked hard. Carentan had been a nice distraction from the fact that she didn't have any medicine on her, but now it was all she could think about. It would be fine. It would be fine. She would be  _fine_.

Nixon had been gone for a while. He was supposed to be her foxhole buddy, but he had left an hour ago to "take a leak" and hadn't returned. If it were any other man, Karolina would have gone to look for him, but she knew where he was - he was probably snug next to Winters, shooting the shit and distracting their leader from keeping watch on the line.

The bushes behind her rustled, and she pointed her Welrod at the movement. "Flash," she mumbled.

"Thunder," replied the face of Harry Welsh, followed by the towering form of Winters. "Just the gal we were looking for."

She put her Welrod down and readjusted her helmet. "What is the status of the situation?"

"Well, the Germans we encountered in town were only a fraction left behind to defend it," Harry said as Winters offered her his canteen. She took a sip of the water and handed it back with a grateful nod. "We ran into these guys as they were looping back to take back Carentan, and there could be more coming, we don't know."

"Encouraging," Karolina said dryly, and Winters shifted his weight off of his bad foot. "What do you need me for?"

"We caught ourselves a prisoner, he was trying to sneak through our line," Winters said, and she pushed herself up and wiped the mud off of the back of her legs. "We need a translator."

She eyed him carefully. "I can do more than translate," she said, and Harry chuckled. She could smell the whiskey on him from three feet away, and she wrinkled her nose. "Lead me to him."

As they walked through the underbrush, she could hear dull cries of pain coming from down their line, and Winters looked back at her as she perked her head up. "Smith accidentally stabbed Tab," he said, not sounding pleased at all. "Thought he was a Kraut."

"You cannot be too careful," she said quietly, glancing back towards the German line. They had fallen silent - perhaps they had all passed out.

Soon enough they reached a group of men surrounding one tied prisoner sitting on the ground. Nixon stood up and wiped his hands on his pants as she entered the circle and gave him a quick once-over. "So, this is where you have been all night?"

"Partially," he said, shaking his head. She looked around the circle - Welsh, Winters, Nixon, Buck, Lipton, Shifty, and Toye all stood around the man, looking worse for wear. The German prisoner in question was covered in mud and had an old sock stuffed in his mouth and seemed dazed. When she stepped out of the shadows and looked down at him, he looked up at her with a glint of recognition in his eyes and his entire body went stiff. Karolina gave him a slow smile, taking in the sergeant chevrons on his lapels.

"Sir, I think this would go faster if we did it my way," she said to Winters, who seemed to shrug in the dark. "What would you like to know?"

"Tactical details," Nixon said. "How many of them are there, what kinds of backup they're expecting, what kind of artillery they have, their plans for taking Carentan, the usual."

She handed her rifle to Lipton, who took it quickly, and she sighed as she sat back down in the mud next to the soldier. He looked at her with wide eyes as she removed her helmet and ran her fingers through her dirty hair, giving him a gentle look.

" _I bet this is not where you expected to be tonight,"_ she said, feeling the pleasure of speaking German course through her, even though the men around her looked startled at her easy tone. " _Wouldn't you rather be across the field, drinking schnapps with your friends, singing off-key? I know I would. I haven't had a glass of schnapps in, oh... five years, I believe._ " She sighed and shook her head.

"That doesn't sound like an interrogation," Toye said behind her, and Karolina ignored him.

" _It was foolish of you to sneak over here, but then again, it's what I would have done,_ " she said, picking up her Welrod and holding it in her hands, admiring the glint of lightning flashing off of its trigger. " _Have you ever seen one of these before?"_

The man shook his head, blinking rapidly at her.

" _It's a fantastic little invention, I'll tell you what it does._ " She raised the pistol and pressed it into his forehead, and the man shook. " _I can fire a bullet directly into your brain, and it won't make a sound._ " She reached forward and stroked his cheek, and he flinched away. " _I am dying to try it out."_

She lowered the pistol and tapped a finger on his gag. " _Now, I would like to know who you are, what company you are in, how many soldiers are across that field, who is coming to help you, and what type of armament you have over there. I will remove your gag, naturally, but you must promise me that you won't make a peep - if you do, I will test out my new toy on your head."_ She tapped the pistol against his temple. " _And if you are very good, I will let you live. Do we have a deal?_ "

The man glared at her but nodded slowly, his eyes taking in her form and narrowing. She pinched the sock with her fingertips and yanked it from the man's mouth, allowing him to retch while she leisurely loaded her gun.

" _We don't have all night,_ " she said as he coughed, and he looked up at her with hatred blazing from his eyes. " _Get to it._ "

" _My name is Krollman, this is a Fallschirmjäger company, and you are a traitor to your Fuhrer and to your country, you vile bitch."_

"His name is Krollman, that comapny over there is a paratrooper one, and I am a traitor to the Fuhrer and to my country," she said to Winters, staring down at the man. "Oh, and I'm also a "disgusting bitch", apparently.  _Keep going."_

" _There are fifty of us over there,_ " Krollman said, and Karolina could tell he was lying. " _The rest of my division is coming to take back Carentan, we have rifles and mortars and tank units on call."_

She doubted that, but she reported it back to Winters, and he stepped closer to the two of them. "Anything else you want to ask him, sir?"

Winters looked as if he wanted to say something but shook his head. "No, thank you Agent Shütze. I think we are done here."

" _Thank you very much, Krollman,_ " she said, walking to stand in front of him. " _Where are you from?"_ Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the men around her inching backwards.

Krollman glared up at him. " _I'm from Bremen, you cunt."_

She smiled at him. " _How interesting! I'm from Hamburg, we're practically neighbors._ " She glanced at Nixon, and he nodded before looking away. " _It was certainly nice to speak German again. Thank you for your help, we truly appreciate it. Well, auf Wiedersehen!"_

She raised the pistol, pointed it between Krollman's eyebrows, and pulled the trigger on her Welrod.

* * *

Ron had just finished giving Blithe his own version of a pep talk when Liebgott intercepted him in the woods. Behind the Easy man, Ron could hear the low whine of a man in pain, and he peered around Liebgott's shoulder to glare at the party of men crouched below the tree a few yards away.

"Is Talbert still not squared away?" he said. They had better keep it down, or they'd start the firefight five hours early.

"No, sir, he's still getting stabilized," Liebgott panted. "Lieutenant Nixon wanted me to tell you that they had caught a Kraut sneaking across the line, and that Kar-, I mean, Agent Shütze was going to interrogate him."

And to think, he had wasted all that time trying to push Blithe out of the black hole the man was sliding into when he could have been watching Karolina doing her worst on some poor Kraut bastard. "Lead the way, Liebgott," he said, shouldering his Thompson as they stomped through the underbrush, and through the rain in the trees he heard her voice speaking a lulling, deceptively calm German in a way he had never heard before. Liebgott screwed up his face in confusion as he listened to Karolina speak, shaking his head as they approached a circle of men. Nixon turned around to acknowledge him, looking wary.

Karolina straightened up and looked at Winters. "Anything else you want to ask him, sir?"

Winters shook his head, grimacing. "No, thank you Agent Shütze. I think we're done here." Karolina nodded slightly and walked back to stand in front of the captured man.

" _Vielen Dank, Krollman. Woher kommen Sie?_ " she said, and Ron listened to the words float from her mouth. When she spoke it, German sounded beautiful.

" _Ich komme aus Bremen, du Fotze_ ," the man said, and Liebgott inhaled sharply.

"What did he say?" Ron asked.

Liebgott looked at him, his jaw set angrily. "He called her... well, I don't even want to say it, sir." Ron just stared down at him until he sighed. "He called her a cunt, sir."

His hand found his pistol automatically, but he looked over to Karolina first and found her smiling, talking animatedly to the man in German, but he recognized the look behind her eyes. He shouldn't have been surprised when she drew the pistol on the man in front of her, but he was taken aback at the authority that radiated off of her when she pulled the trigger and watched the man keel backwards, the pistol making popping as if she had just uncorked a bottle of champagne in celebration.

Nixon and Liebgott flinched, although they must have known what was coming, and Karolina turned to look at the men gathered behind her, meeting their startled expressions. "No prisoners," she said quietly, and then her eyes flickered over to his, acknowledging his presence for the first time. Her face softened, and her eyes looked so earnest, as if she could read his thoughts. "No exceptions." She shrugged and walked towards Ron, brushing his shoulder slightly as she went, and disappeared into the darkness behind him.

Nixon turned to watch her go, and then raised an eyebrow slightly. "You better go find her, before she decides to walk across that field and save us a lot of trouble," he said, and Ron instantly turned and weaved his way into the shadows.

* * *

She had wanted him to follow her, and when she heard the footsteps behind her, she didn't turn around from where she sat on a fallen log. She knew it was him by the way his boots stomped on the ground. Instead, she held her hand in the air, her fingers curled. "Can I have a cigarette?"

Karolina heard the crinkling of cellophane, and then his fingers brushed hers as he placed a single cigarette in her hand. She placed it between her lips, and he knelt down with his lighter cupped in his hand, and she held the end to the flame. She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes for a moment, relishing the feeling of a few raindrops hitting her cheeks.

He sat down beside her on the log, a comfortable distance between them, and she smiled. "Thank you," she said, opening her eyes. She could see a patch of stars between the clouds, the edge of Orion's Belt, and she sighed and rolled her head, listening to her neck pop, and she patted her Welrod to make sure it was secure in its holster.

Speirs was silent, watching her and pretending as if he wasn't watching her all at once, the usual look of disquieted interest on his face as she stayed silent. She wanted him to speak first, but it seemed as if he was waiting for her to make the opening statement.

"I wondered if you were going to watch me," she said. "I didn't see you until it was over."

He huffed to himself quietly. "You were very good at it," he said, and he meant it. She looked over at him and met his gaze. "In control."

"I have to be in control," she said, and then grimaced. She didn't think that would have ever come out of her mouth, not voluntarily, not to him. "If I am not, then I become..."

"Jittery," he finished for her, and she nodded. He looked away, out into the forest in front of them. "I know. I'm the same way. I understand."

She nodded quietly and took a drag from her cigarette, watching the red flame leave a millimeter of ash in its wake. "Krollman knew who I was." When Ron looked her way, she shrugged. "I could tell from the look in his eyes."

"He wasn't very polite," Ron said, and she looked at him in surprise. "Liebgott gave me a translation."

"Ah," she said, smiling bitterly. "I am used to it by now. Men tend to lash out, near the end. Philippe always had the most..." She stopped herself, the words not willing to come out of her mouth. She didn't know why she had the impulse to mention him, but Ron turned to face her, and she looked up. His eyes were bright, the same way they had glowed at her when she had left him behind in Aldbourne, and she smiled.

"Was Philippe your..." he started, and she nodded.

"Brother," she said quietly. "He was my twin brother. My only family." She felt the cigarette singeing the delicate skin between her fingers and she dropped it on the ground.

"If you want to," Speirs said, and then stopped to consider his words. "You could tell me about him."

She really looked at him then, tried to decipher the meaning in the ways that his eyes darted around the clearing as if he expected anyone to step out behind a tree and surprise them, the way he was looking at her so intently. "You are being very kind to me," she said softly. "Why?"

He sighed and took off his helmet. "You always ask questions like that," he said under his breath.

"I want to know," she said simply. "You hate me, or hated me, and now you tolerate me, I suppose. But you are being very nice to me, lately. Why?"

He shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and stared off into the darkness, his mouth tight, and Karolina sighed. He clearly wasn't going to divulge the meaning behind his actions, so she reached forward and plucked the cigarette pack from his sleeve. "Can I have another?"

"You're already taking it," he said gruffly, but he pulled his lighter out of his pocket and lit her cigarette. "You're gonna have a sore throat tomorrow."

"I do not blame you for killing those prisoners," she said bluntly, and he flinched, but she didn't meet his eye. " _If_  you killed them, that is. There are many versions of a story going around, gossip the men are spreading. It was necessary, at the time. Economical. You were doing your job."

Ron laughed quietly, the sound bitter and dry. He wouldn't look at her either, and she reached over and put her hand on his arm. He froze instantly, just as she knew he would, and she stared at him. "If you had told me last night, I would not have judged you. I cannot judge anyone."

He ground his teeth together and looked at her, his peculiar mask in place. "I didn't do it because I was ordered to. I did it because I saw the opportunity, and I liked it. I wanted..." He shook his head, lost for words.

She nodded slowly. "I know. I understand. I have done it before, and I am going to do it again, and again, until they stop me."

His face relaxed and his eyes narrowed. He looked terrifyingly determined, and she removed her hand as he stood up. He turned to look down at her as he readjusted his Thompson on his shoulder and waited for her to stand up as well, and when she did, he lit his cigarette and took a step towards her, the glow illuminating his face. "They won't be able to stop you," he said quietly. "Not with us."

 _Not with me,_  his expression said instead. Karolina took a drag from her cigarette and followed him through the woods.


	17. Supply and Demand

Chapter Seventeen

Supply and Demand

_Normandy, France_

_June 1944_

 

Swimming up from the depths of sleep, Karolina felt like her body was strapped with weights that anchored her to the muddy bottom of the foxhole she shared with Nixon. Her brain was awake, taking in the sound of boots squelching through mud and the smell of cigarette smoke and the soggy feeling of her drenched pants, but her limbs were slow to move.

 _Maybe I could go back to sleep._ She always forgot how delicious sleep was until she began to do it regularly, and that in itself was a particular kind of drug that she would always be addicted to. Was it after her escape in London when she slept for two days straight, or was it in Paris, when she was hiding out in the attic of an abandoned hotel? She couldn't remember. She was already sinking back down into the dull haze of memory and dream, letting her thoughts evaporate into a pleasant nothingness.

"You are crushing me," said Ella's voice in her right ear.

"I told you there wasn't enough room for three people," whispered Nixon.

"You take up too much space!" Ella hissed.

"I was here first," Nixon said quietly. "And if you don't shut up, you're gonna wake her."

Karolina took a deep breath and sighed through her nose, and the foxhole grew silent again, but it was too late - her sleepy haze disintegrated around her when she felt the warm metal of her rifle against her cheek, heard the voices of the men around her, recognized the way Ella's jacket was touching her arm - and she opened her bleary eyes to see Ella and Nixon glaring at each other from across the tightly-packed foxhole. She peeled the metal stock of the rifle away from her face and threw it aside, massaged her sore throat and silently willed the two idiots beside her to find another foxhole to bitch in.

" _Guten Morgen,"_ Ella said, no longer feeling the need to whisper.

" _Buongiorno_ ," Karolina said lowly. She leaned back against the dirt wall and closed her eyes. "Please stop talking." Her eyes were burning as if they had been rubbed with horseradish, her skin was clammy under her shirt and jacket, and she felt like she was going to throw up any moment. She winced at the nauseating idea of facing her eighth day without medicine, and as soon as she thought it couldn't get worse, the stitches on her forehead began to itch.

Ella's hand pressed against her temple, carefully avoiding her bandage. " _Hai un po 'di febbre._ "

"I know," Karolina said. The heat was easing its way out from under her bandage and down across her eyes. "I can feel it."

The hand vanished from her forehead. "Nixon, will you find Roe and ask for aspirin?" Ella said, and he groaned as he pushed himself to his feet.

"Give her some water, I'll be back in a minute," he said, patting Karolina on the shoulder as he left. She waited until his footsteps faded behind her before she opened her eyes and looked at Ella, taking in the dirt and blood that had dried on the girl's face.

"Where have you been?" Karolina asked. "The last time I saw you was before -"

"Carentan," Ella finished, pulling her pack towards her and opening the flap quickly. "I know. During the fight, I helped the people in the town escape, and afterwards I found Mark and exchanged info." She clenched something round in her fist and shoved her hand into Karolina's jacket pocket. "He told me to give you this."

Yes, it was early in the morning, and yes, there weren't many people around, but whatever the object was, it was still a risk to pass intelligence out in the open. Karolina grabbed Ella's wrist once she slipped her hand out of the pocket. "Have you lost your  _mind_?"

"I had to give it to you before Nixon came back," she muttered, jerking her hand out of Karolina's grasp.

Karolina slid her fingers into her jacket pocket and felt the cool glass of a small, rounded vial - she opened the pocket wider and peered in and  _oh thank God._ Her fingers made quick work of unscrewing the cap and closed around one small blue pill, and she swore she would have wept from relief had she been alone. Ella turned around and handed her a canteen of cold water and she swallowed the pill quickly, before anyone could stop her, before anyone could recognize what she was doing. It was only after the third sip of water that she noticed the stoic look on Ella's face, as if she was trying very hard not to say what was on her mind.

Karolina wiped the sweat off of her brow and touched the bandage. It was soaked through. "Well, say it," she stated, handing the canteen back to Ella. "Whatever it is you want to say to me."

"It is going to kill you," Ella said quietly as she packed her canteen away. "One day. Tar told Mark that he would be sending over a refill when the coastline was secure. You have to only take one every few days, make them last." She tossed her bag across the foxhole, tired and frustrated. "I don't want to be your  _supplier._ "

Karolina wiped away the sweat-soaked hair from her bandage and peeled it off. "How does it look?"

Ella squinted. "Green and red," she said shortly. "Bad."

Karolina shut her eyes and leaned back against the dirt wall of the foxhole, wondering if it was at all possible to trick Ella into going away for a while so she could relax and enjoy the feeling of life being breathed back into her body, of the new energy tingling in her fingertips, but she doubted that the girl would ever leave her alone now. She tried to ignore the guilty feeling building in her chest, tried to stop herself from wondering why she felt guilty in the first place. Ella had lived with her for five months - where did she think Karolina was getting the medicine from? It wasn't as if it had been arriving from Berlin via air mail.  _She knew, she just didn't want to admit it to herself._ And if Ella felt that way, it certainly wasn't Karolina's problem.  _Her personal feelings do not concern me._ Her chest tightened in protest.

"Here," said Nixon's voice behind her, and he dropped a package in her lap. She reached down and found a new bandage alongside a packet of aspirin. "Doc said to take them now and change the bandage, but I see you've already taken care of the old one." He grimaced as he leaned in for a closer look at her forehead. "That's not cute."

She rolled her eyes and ripped into the bandage. "It's hard to be attractive when you are covered in mud." Her hands were shaking slightly, her heart was beating a little quicker, her eyes were feeling less cloudy by the second. "Thank you for this."

"Least I could do," Nixon said, jumping into the foxhole and giving Ella a firm nudge as he made room for himself. She swatted his elbow away and dug into her side of the dirt wall, refusing to move an inch, and Nixon shook his head. "Look, aren't you supposed to be with your company anyway?" Ella glared at him but said nothing, and Nixon threw up his hands. "Fine!" he said. "Stay, please, kick me some more."

" _Please,_ " Karolina said loudly, and the two of them froze. "Just stop." She pressed the new bandage to her forehead and inhaled deeply through her nose. "Please."

Ella pushed herself up and climbed out of the foxhole, refusing to look at both of them as she stomped off into the trees. Nixon raised an eyebrow and shook his head as he reached for his flask. "Touchy," he mumbled, and Karolina shot him a disapproving look. "What?"

"Stop antagonizing her," she said.

Nixon looked affronted. "I was not," he said. "She was the one who shoved her way in here and refused to leave. She wouldn't even talk to me. I don't know what I did to make her angry, I was just sitting here."

Karolina tied the bandage under her hairline and retrieved her helmet. "Trust me, it's not you," she said, adjusting the straps before taking it off and looking at it closely. "Who was wearing my helmet?"

"Me," Nixon said, taking a swig from the flask. "I needed it when I was going to HQ earlier to give Strayer my report on the sergeant you shot last night."

"Where was your helmet?"

"I gave it to Harry, so he could boil coffee," Nixon replied with a grin.

Karolina rolled her eyes. "And was the information good?"

"Surprisingly, yes," Nixon said. "We think he was bluffing about the tanks, but everything else seemed to check out. We got lucky."

She scoffed and tested her helmet again, wobbling it on her head. "'Lucky'," she mumbled.

"If you hadn't been there, who knows?" Nixon said, tucking the flask back in his pocket. "He probably wouldn't have squealed. You're pretty scary when you want to be."

Karolina coughed and shrugged. "It's my job," she said simply. "I have to do it." She coughed again, hating the grating feeling in her throat from the two cigarettes she had smoked the night before.

Nixon raised an eyebrow. "American cigarettes not as smooth as you thought?" he said slyly. She could hear the insinuation in his tone and she ignored it, even though her eyes were seeing the stars through the trees and the bright end of a burning cigarette in the darkness.

"I regret picking up the habit," she said, and her brain reeled, looking for words to distract Nixon from seeing the heat she felt on her neck. "They always told us that smoking polluted the lungs and made it difficult to build up proper stamina and that it should be avoided at all costs. But I understand now, it takes some of the sharpness away."

"Buck told me that you told him that you hated cigarettes," Nixon said nonchalantly.

She narrowed her eyes. "Buck talks too much."

"He certainly likes talking to you," Nixon said with a wink, and she groaned. "What? It's obvious."

"It is only because I threatened to kill him, or to cut his hand off," she said with a wave. "I do not remember exactly. All the men who learned how to explode trees in Aldbourne like me. Men enjoy danger, I think."

Nixon shook his head, but his eyes were glittering. "Well, what about Speirs?"

Karolina took out her silver knife and cleaned the blade with her shirt. "What about him?" She ignored the pointed look Nixon gave her and held the knife up to the early morning light.

Nixon wasn't going to give up easily, though. "You two seem... closer, now. Like friends."

Karolina blew off a piece of dirt from the end of the blade. "No friends in war, only comrades." Even as she said it, even as she heard the words of her old BDM leader leave her mouth, she didn't believe it, and she froze for a moment as the two halves of her brain clashed together. Nixon was staring at her curiously, as if he could see the conflict happening in her mind play out on her face - and perhaps he did, and if that normally brought Karolina shame, she wasn't feeling ashamed now - and she avoided his gaze as her mind whirled inside her skull.

"Hey," Nixon said, reaching out a hand, and she snapped out of it. He was looking at her as if she were a machine that had malfunctioned. "You alright?"

"I'm fine," she said slowly, sinking back against the dirt wall of the foxhole, staring at her boots.

"That didn't even sound like you," he said, scooting closer. "It sounded like some kind of recording being played. Are you sure -"

Karolina stood up before he could get any closer. "I am  _fine_ ," she said firmly, making herself believe it, and she climbed up out of the foxhole before he could get another word in. She picked up her rifle and shouldered it, glancing over at him and taking in his disbelieving look. "I am tired of answering questions."

It was the kindest thing she could think to say, and she left him there before he crawled out of the foxhole and followed her into the underbrush. Why was he always chasing her down for information? _Because he was the intelligence officer. Don't be stupid. See through him._ She stepped over a fallen trunk riddled with bullet holes. Nixon was interested in her in a way a mother hen was interested in her chicks.  _Protective, intuitive._ Collecting data?  _No, the questions were too personal._ Romantically interested in her?  _He had a wife, but perhaps, based on prior behavior with English women._ That didn't quite feel right, so she threw that analysis out. Concerned about her bodily health?  _Enough to expose her medicinal habits to a courtyard full of men._ She furrowed her brow and kicked over a discarded cartridge of bullets.

Nixon was taking great joy in the fact that Buck had decided to be overly friendly, and the fact that Speirs had begun to be... talkative, tangible. Was it merely petty gossip and the thrill of intrigue between the soldiers that interested him so much?  _No, there had to be something more._ Jealousy?  _Highly doubtful. What, then?_  She had no answers

She walked under the cover of the trees and saw Harry Welsh shaking his head over a map, discussing something with Johnny Martin, who looked over at her and nodded, his eyes traveling up to the bandage poking out from under her helmet.

"We don't know what they've got, possibly more paratroopers," Welsh said as she stopped behind him. "Fire and maneuver, that's the name of the game. Fire and maneuver. Dog and Fox companies will be on our left flank, following us. Any questions?"

Bill Guarnere shook his head and glanced over towards Karolina. "You gonna manage to keep yourself from getting pinged today, doll?"

She smiled down at him. "My odds do not look great, all things considered," she replied, and Johnny shook his head. "But I will try."

"Let's make 'em holler," Welsh said as he packed away his map. Karolina crouched down by Bill when he beckoned to her.

"Hey, you think there's anything you could yell at those Krauts over there to get them to pack up and go home?" he asked, and Malarkey snorted.

"Not likely, unless she tells them that there's fresh strudel in the next town over," Malarkey deadpanned.

"It's nine-thirty in the evening back home," Frank Perconte said beside them. He had opened his mouth to say something else, but she never caught it - Harry Welsh had pummeled into her and pushed her to the ground, and only then did she hear the whistles of incoming artillery.

"Mortars!" he screamed in her ear, and Karolina kicked him off of her as she rolled over into the nearest foxhole, which was already occupied by both Bill and Martin. Bill covered her with his arms and pushed her down beside Martin.

"Get off!" she hollered as a round exploded behind them, and instead of letting go, Bill tightened his grip around her waist.

"Get that OP in!" Harry screamed above them, and Karolina pinched the underside of Bill's arm sharply until he yelped and finally let her go. She reached outside of the foxhole and grabbed her rifle, which had been thrown to the side during the mad scramble for cover and checked her ammo, but Bill grabbed at her ankles and dragged her backwards towards safety. Martin rose up to fire across the field as Karolina shook Bill off a second time.

" _Would you stop?_ " she yelled at him as she shouldered the rifle and took aim over the top of the foxhole. She caught a man across the field in her line of vision and squeezed the trigger, moving on to the next enemy before she saw him fall.

"Go, lock and load!" Winters yelled as he ran behind them, and Bill shook his head as he rose up and fired beside her.

The explosions around them were mostly mortars backed up by bazookas, but something didn't sound or feel right. Karolina ducked as a spray of bullets ate into a felled tree behind her, and she touched the wall of the foxhole, feeling the ground shake from the action.  _Stupid, how could you tell anything from grabbing dirt?_ She narrowed her eyes, not trusting her instincts or the fighting around her, and reloaded. Next to her, Harry was yelling into the field radio about the mortars raining down around them, Luz had somehow lost his helmet, and Johnny Martin elbowed her in the side as he crouched down. "What the goddamn hell are you doing?"

She could feel the blood vibrating through her brain. "Something is not right," she said as she leaned forward and fired again. She was so close to Bill that she could hear his ragged breath. "It is too quiet."

"Too fucking quiet!?" Bill hollered over the noise of a nearby machine gun. "You fucking pulling my leg?"

"Guarnere!" Winters yelled behind them, and Bill slipped out of the foxhole and left Martin and Karolina to their own devices. She glanced at Johnny before she pressed her cheek back to the side of her rifle and picked off a man peeking over the hill. Karolina slipped into the fluidity of firing of her gun, felt her breath become more even despite the hammering of her heart against her rib cage. This was the priceless sensation, the feeling of being in control that she craved and the confidence the medicine gave her, the way she preternaturally knew that her bullets would find their target. It was all going so well until Harry lifted up his binoculars beside her and began to panic.

She felt the tell-tale rumble of tanks and her mind registered the fact that they were Tigers before she could look over and see them with her own eyes. "Where did they come from?" Harry yelled, and her memory recalled the smug look on the German prisoner's face, Krollman, that bastard.  _He knew I wouldn't believe him, that they wouldn't believe him._ She tasted blood in her mouth and her tongue found the bite on the inside of her cheek.  _Stay in control, stay in control._

"Fuck," Martin swore, and Karolina dropped to her knees and grabbed at her pack, dropping her rifle on the ground by her feet. She knew Ella carried one in her pack, Ella was always prepared for anything, and she would bet money that Katya had a few, but wouldn't tell anyone.  _You're slipping,_ said the unhelpful voice in her head,  _you're not as sharp as you used to be..._

But then she touched the smooth handle of the sticky bomb laying at the very bottom of her pack, and she felt herself smile despite the heavy fire overhead. In Carentan, she had been so sure that she was about to die as she clung to the metal of the iron fire escape, but she had known better. She knew that she had earned a violent death, and a mad dash across a field to throw a sticky bomb onto a tank was certainly a painful way to go.  _Well, so be it._ It was what was necessary, what needed to be done. There was no other option.

The tank rotated towards their line and fired to the left, and the impact shook her sideways into Martin's legs. She gripped the earth in front of her and grabbed onto her rifle, throwing it over her shoulder and clutching the bomb tight in her fist. Martin looked down to see what she was doing, and his eyes went wide.

"What the fuck are you -" he paused, looking at the bomb in her hand. "What the hell is that?"

Their left flank disintegrated as Dog and Fox began to retreat away from the tank's line of fire, and she held onto his shoulder. "Martin, when I tell you, give me covering fire. I have to wait until it gets closer." She held up the bomb and his eyes latched onto it. "This is filled with nitroglycerin, it will set everything it touches on fire.  _Do not_ follow me, understand?"

He blinked, and then before she could block his arm, he knocked the round bomb out of her hand and the grenade careened down the embankment behind them. She reflexively ducked as another round fired from the tank, and then lost her sense of reality as two more tanks joined its leader on the hill above the meadow. This could not be happening, but it was happening, and the smell of fear was thick in the air around them. They were all going to die in these bushes if she didn't get a move on. She picked up her rifle and fired a few quick bursts before she slid out of the foxhole and went after the bomb, ignoring Johnny's yells of bloody murder behind her.

She had almost gotten her hands on the bomb when a blonde blur collided into her, and she looked up to see Katya's blood-smeared face glaring at her. "Give it to me," the Russian yelled, and Karolina handed it over without a second thought. "It is my time. I will go."

Karolina didn't bother to ask her if she was sure - Katya was wearing the determined look of concentration married with pure hatred that took over her face whenever something particularly challenging was preventing her from getting the job done. Katya clapped her on the shoulder and kissed her cheek, and the sensation stung Karolina's skin. " _Udachi tebe_ ," she said in Karolina's ear, and then she turned and ran out into the open with the sticky bomb in her hand, firing her pistol in front of her as she went.

Karolina wiped her cheek with her hand and crawled back towards her foxhole, doing her best to keep track of Katya as she dodged bullets along the line. "Covering fire on Medvedeva!" she screamed, and the men around her snapped their necks as they watched the Russian woman weave in and out of the hedgerow, looking for a way to sneak up on the Tigers in front of them.

Karolina glanced over at Harry, who was staring at her, and the look of mad desperation in his eyes made her stomach twist. "Let's go McGrath, on me," he yelled at the man over his shoulder. "Shift your fire right."

She skidded back into her foxhole and reclaimed her rifle, firing upon any helmet that emerged from the German tanks, looking for Katya out of the corner of her scope but finding no trace of the Russian. There was a high chance that she had been shot down before she could have reached the tanks, but Karolina was skeptical. Katya was nothing if not sneaky. As Harry and McGrath hauled a bazooka out of a canvas bag, a tank far behind the German line erupted into flames, shooting high into the air before the dull thud of an explosion rocketed through the ground.  _Finally._ But now Katya had to find her way back to their line.

Martin grunted and cursed and screamed beside her as Harry fumbled with the bazooka, and she turned and fired on the Tiger that was bearing down upon the men, steeling herself for the image of Harry being blow apart by the tank's artillery before he could make his shot. The tank fired to their right, shattering the trees at the base of their trunks, and Martin pushed her down, his hand shaking as it clung to her shirt.

She glanced over the dirt to see Harry and McGrath find their target in the underbelly of the approaching tank and watched as the Tiger capsized over the hill, flames shooting out from beneath its tracks. The explosion shook the fallen trees to the side as Harry and McGrath scrambled back to safety, and a volley of fire rang out from their side as the Germans on the hill began to flee from the flames and into the meadow in front of the tanks. She watched a German lieutenant drop to his knees before reloading her rifle and firing a shot through his head.

Easy was holding the line. Fox and Dog had long disappeared, leaving them exposed and vulnerable, and she worried about Ella, who was never top notch at firefights.  _You never said goodbye,_ the voice in her head chimed in again, and she shook that thought right out of her skull. She had never been plagued by so much guilt before, and she hated it. She fired again and again until she wasn't seeing what was in front of her, not really, until a larger explosion tore her away from her daze. A different sort of rumbling was vibrating through the ground, and over the hill rose the rounded domes of three Shermans. The men around her began to shout in glee, the relief in their voices evident. They weren't dying in this field today.

* * *

Nixon strode forward towards the line, looking to make sure his people were okay. He was plagued by paranoia that somehow Dick and Karolina had been mowed down by Kraut tanks, but who could blame him? He let out a breath when he saw a familiar dirt-covered black-clad figure sitting on a log, smoking a cigarette and casting a suspicious eye on the field in front of her. Even from yards away, he could pick up the dark purple bloom around her nose and eye from where she had landed face-first in Carentan. It looked worse now than it did this morning.

He knew that he was annoying her, but he really wanted the best for her. It was strange how Karolina had gone from a friend to his priority... well, his second priority, after Dick. He knew that she was sick from withdrawal in the way he became distressingly ill after a few days without Vat 69. Maybe that's what drove him to check up on her incessantly, to pry into her life. She put up a good front, of course, but he knew that she was more dimensional than her straightforward demeanor suggested. And the idea that she could be attracted to anyone - Speirs, Buck, the hundreds of other men they were surrounded by daily - drove him nuts in the way that an older brother hated to see anyone messing with his little sister.

She probably didn't want to talk to him anyway, but he told himself not to pry.  _I'm just going to make sure she's okay, and then go look for Dick, that's all._ Before he could reach her, however, a thoroughly livid Johnny Martin marched up to her and snatched her up by her shirt collar.

Karolina dropped her cigarette in surprise, and Martin grabbed hold of her shoulders and shook her, his eyes maniacal. "Have you fucking lost your goddamn mind?" he screeched, and everyone in the vicinity pretended not to watch them.

"No," Karolina said bluntly, and Martin gave her another firm shake. She pushed his arms away and took a step back. "What's wrong?"

Martin shook his head and gestured out in front of him wildly. "What's  _wrong_?" he mocked, his face screwed up into a searing mask of anger. "You never, ever do something like that again, you hear me?"

"I did nothing, because you inhibited me," she said calmly, sitting back down on the log. She looked so tired. "I am sorry if I upset you."

Martin stood still for a millisecond and then got up in her face, a finger pointed at her nose. "You ever try and pull something like that again and I will kick your ass back to Berlin," he said, his finger shaking. "Fucking crazy ass Kraut."

He stormed out of the clearing and back into the hedgerow, and every man around Nixon acted as if they were busy, as if they hadn't heard Johnny Martin, perhaps the more frightening member of Easy Company, come after Karolina Shütze as if she were a naughty child. Karolina leaned back and tilted her face up to the midday sun and sighed. She turned her head towards Nixon and opened an eye. He took that as permission to speak to her.

"I came to see whether you were squashed by a tank or not," he said as he walked forward and sat down on the log. "I promise I'm not spying on you all the time."

"If you are, you are a terrible spy," she said quietly, and he knew he had been forgiven for his earlier prying. "But you do see all my fights." She reached up and scratched at her bandage, and Nixon shook another cigarette from his pack and offered it to her. She held up a hand and he shrugged and lit it for himself.

"Did you do something to Johnny?"

She shot him a sideways glance. "He is angry because I was going to detonate a sticky bomb," she said casually.

Nixon narrowed his eyes and flicked the ash from the end of his cigarette. "Detonate a sticky... but that would mean that you had to be close enough to the tank in order to set it off."

She looked at him stoically, waiting for him to get to the point, and when his brain caught up to her plan he exploded up from the tree.

" _You did not._ "

"Well, clearly I did not," she said, her eyes laughing at him despite the stormy expression on her face. "Otherwise we would not be talking."

Nixon dropped back onto the log and ran his hands through his hair. "Why,  _why,_ why do you keep trying to blow yourself up?"

She rolled her eyes. "I don't want to blow myself up, I want to win." She rubbed at the stitches on her stomach and sighed. "There were three tanks, no assistance, I was preparing to do what was necessary to save the others."

He shook his head. "So, what happened? The Shermans get there just in time to stop you from going up in a fireball?"

"No," Karolina said, rising up from the log. "Medvedeva snatched it out of my hand and ran towards the tanks herself. She never came back." She plucked the cigarette from his hand, look a drag, and dropped it to the ground before grinding it into the dirt with the toe of her boot. "Come, let's find her."

Nixon stood up and followed as Karolina forged ahead, ignoring the baffled look he was getting from Harry Welsh. If the rumors were true, Welsh had no right to act as if Karolina was the crazy one. Nixon unbuckled his pistol from his holster as Karolina stepped out of the hedgerow and into the war-torn no-man's-land between the German and American line. She stood there for a moment scanning the field before she grabbed for her rifle and raised the scope to her eye, leveling it with the horizon.

"This is making me nervous," Nixon admitted aloud. It felt wrong to stand there, even though the action was over. He felt as if a rogue Kraut was going to come over the hill at any moment. "Where did she go?"

"Left," Karolina said, lowering her rifle. "Where Dog and Fox abandoned the line. She went in between the bushes to avoid fire." Karolina marched towards the left, and Nixon followed, stepping over craters left from artillery and empty shell casings, dodging the puddles of blood and doing his best not to look at the bodies of fallen soldiers that littered the ground every few yards. Karolina didn't seem to mind at all, going so far to step over a severed hand without a second thought. Nixon looked up at the blue sky and took a deep breath.

She stopped near the end of the line, and then walked into the open field towards the German line. Nixon thought he heard shouts from the other men behind him, but he wasn't going to take his eyes off of the burning tanks and dead Krauts in front of them - he had heard wicked stories from men in the Pacific about 'dead' Japs pulling a pin out of a hidden grenade as soon as Yankee troops walked past them. He would be damned if he lost a leg or worse because Karolina wanted to track another spy.

She stopped short of a large crater and took a knee, and Nixon followed on reflex. "Here," she said, raising the scope to her eye once more and peering past a line of trees. "A tank exploded, and I assumed it was her." She rose up again and looked back at him. "I will go and see if there is a bomb remnant on the tank." She squinted into the field behind them, her eyes flickering back and forth. "If there is a remnant at all."

Nixon took in the three destroyed tanks. "What are the chances that she was shot down before she could get to one?"

"High," Karolina said bluntly, walking forward. "I saw one of the tanks incapacitated before the Shermans arrived. What else could have done that?"

Nixon remembered focusing his binoculars as one of the tanks caught fire in the heat of the fight. "That's true," he said. "So, it must be her."

"Probably," she said, jumping over a large mound of dirt. "If she did not, then we will find her body."

They picked their way through the debris and dead Germans, swatted away the black flies that were already descending on the bodies, keeping their eyes peeled for a body clad in black on the ground, but nothing turned up that told Nixon that Katya Medvedeva had been taken down before reaching her destination. They were halfway up the ridge when Ella stepped out of the smoke, her face suspicious. From the sweat that drenched her face, it was clear that she had been doing some canvassing of her own.

" _Niente,_ " she said to the both of them. "The bomb was on the tank. I found the casing." She held up the rounded shell of the sticky bomb as proof. "But she is nowhere."

"Captured?" Nixon suggested, but the women shook their heads.

"She has the poison tooth," Ella said. "She would kill herself before getting captured."

"And her body would be here," Karolina said. The two spies looked at each other for a moment before Ella clenched her jaw and swore. Nixon stared off into the distance, calculating how far one could get on foot before encountering German soldiers.  _Not very far_. The odds of avoiding capture were slim. Unless someone wanted to be captured. Unless Medvedeva had run towards the German line on purpose.

"She's gone," Karolina said simply. "She's running." Her eyes looked distant, wistful, and Nixon saw the pure jealousy etch its way onto Karolina's face. That look frightened him more than standing on enemy territory, more than the idea that a dangerous Russian spy was on the lam.

* * *

Buck Compton was feeling good. He and his guys had avoided getting annihilated by Kraut tanks, had held the line until the Shermans could finish them off, and that had given him a residual high that made his feet tingle. It almost felt like winning the Rose Bowl. Almost.

He walked forward into the midday sun, cracking his knuckles and looking for a shady place to sit. He really wanted to wash the blood and grime off of his hands but didn't want to waste any of the water in his canteen. They were still awaiting orders on where to go and when to go there, and he had no idea what Easy would be up against next. Better to save what resources he had. His hand itched towards his pack to pat the pocket that usually held his ammunition, and he reminded himself to check how many rounds he had left later in the day.

Karolina and her little Italian friend were standing in a copse of trees off to his left, pouring over a map that the German held in her hands, both of them looking stressed. If the company spies were grimacing, Buck took that as a sign that all was not well. He changed course and headed straight for the two of them, thinking of something clever to say to make Karolina give him one of those little smiles he liked so much. She looked like she needed to be cheered up, anyway.

It wasn't until he was halfway across the clearing that he noticed someone else was headed in the same direction, a particular officer from Dog Company who was not in Buck's good graces. Buck stiffened at the sight of Ron Speirs walking with purpose towards Karolina, and he picked up his own pace, hoping to beat him to her.

Buck wasn't sure what kind of bug was up the man's ass when it came to him talking to Karolina, or even being near her, but he was embarrassed that he had let Speirs intimidate him. Sure, in the moment, the guy looked as if he would and could rip Buck's head clean off his shoulders, and Buck could be forgiven for skedaddling out of his way, but in hindsight, he was pissed off that he had scared so easily.  _Not today_ , he thought as he stood up straighter and met Karolina the same time as Speirs did. Speirs didn't even look his way, didn't acknowledge his presence.

Karolina looked up at the both of them in annoyance. "What?" she said curtly. She was sweating under her helmet and looked sickly pale.

Buck opened his mouth to speak but Speirs beat him to it. "Got intel on Medvedeva," he said bluntly.  _The Russian?_ What kind of trouble was she making now?

Karolina folded the map in her hand and trained her eyes on Speirs like he was the last life jacket on the Titanic. "Come with me," she said to him, glancing at Buck with a perturbed look in her eye. "Lieutenant, did you need something?"

"Ah," Buck started, and then Speirs gave him a once over, and Buck felt blood pound in his ears. "I'll find you later," he finished, looking at the other lieutenant as he said it.  _Once you're not around, you prick._ Why was he always getting the short end of the stick?

"Great," Karolina said, grabbing Ella by the arm and hauling her into the trees, Speirs in tow. They were gone before he could say anything else, and Buck turned and prayed that no one had seen or heard that exchange. Across the clearing, he could see Lipton raise an eyebrow and Harry give him a shit-eating grin. He flipped them the bird before he stomped off into the trees.

* * *

Ron had espied Nixon running through their supply line earlier, wearing his panic on his face as he searched through camp diligently. The intelligence officer caught sight of him and waved him over frantically, and Ron had eased up from his perch on a haystack and followed the man into a covered tent.

"It's Medvedeva," Nixon had gasped out. "She's gone." Nixon had taken a swig from his flask and taken several deep breaths before continuing. "She went past Dog and Fox's line, apparently. Did you see her?"

An affirmative answer was all it took for Nixon to push the man in Karolina's direction - not as if Ron wasn't already planning on finding her after the battle, not after what had happened the night before - and Ron was pleased that she hadn't given Buck Compton the time of day, not when there were serious matters afoot that he had no business sticking his nose in.

Karolina was breathing heavily, almost panting as she led the two of them towards a secluded area in the trees. She walked towards an abandoned foxhole and jumped down inside, beckoning him to join her. The hole was barely big enough to fit all three of them sitting down, but Karolina plopped down in the dirt and spread the map she had held in her hand over her knees.

"What do you know?" she asked, her eyes traveling over the map.

"Please tell us someone saw her in Dog," Ella chimed in. The Italian looked as if she was going to be ill at any moment.

"She passed us soon after the men began to retreat," Ron said, sliding down the dirt wall of the foxhole. The bruises on Karolina's face were distracting him - he was so close to her that her knee was resting on his thigh, and he could see the myriad of colors blooming across her face.  _For fuck's sake, Speirs, get a grip._ He cleared his throat and looked down at the map, finding Dog Company's line. "My men saw her heading west soon after the bombardment began, and then say that she took a right and went straight into the field."

"And no one shot at her?" Karolina asked. "No one on the German side hit her?"

"The men say they gave her covering fire," Ron said. Ella groaned and ground her palms into her eyes, shaking her head. Karolina looked at the girl sharply, but then seemed to deflate into a smaller form. She drew her knees up to her chest and handed Ella the map.

"There is a strong chance that Katya has defected," Karolina said, and Ron shook his head. "We did not find her body after the battle. She would have never surrendered without poisoning herself first. We did find evidence of the bomb detonating, and the shell casing."

"What bomb?"

Karolina looked at the branches above them, avoiding his icy look. "Sticky bomb, one that she took from me," she said. "Kills tanks, but you have to be next to them. She volunteered to run out into the field and attack the tank that was coming towards us."

Which meant that Karolina had intended to run out into the field herself, in full enemy fire, and attack a tank with a bomb that could have taken her with it. Ron balled his hands into fists but forced himself to say nothing, to do nothing, at least not in front of Ella. It wasn't the time or place to launch into a conversation about how vital it was to him that Karolina protect her bodily health at all times.

"Is it possible that she was knocked out and taken by the Germans?" he asked, struggling to keep his voice neutral.

The women glanced at each other and Ella nodded slowly. "Yes, I suppose," she said. "But it is not her way, yes?"

"She has either defected to the Germans or gone solo," Karolina said. "We need to let Tar and Mark know as soon as possible. Ella, do you have your Enigma?"

"It's in the back with the Strayer man," the Italian said, standing up and brushing her pants off. "I will send them a message immediately." She shot a furtive look at Karolina before climbing over the foxhole wall with a huff of exertion and hurrying back towards the temporary camp.

Karolina was silent for a moment, thinking quietly to herself before she sighed and glanced over at him. She looked utterly exhausted - the woman who had been so cool and collected the night before was gone, replaced by a more tangible, more vulnerable person who was quickly running out of steam. She rubbed her hand across her face and accidentally grazed her stitches with her pinkie finger. "Ach."

Ron kicked the other side of the foxhole with the sole of his boot. "I stayed," he said. "When everyone else in my company left, I stayed behind."

"Why?" she asked, and he pursed his lips. "You were in the direct line of fire."

"Easy stayed," he said simply.  _Because you stayed._ Had he known that she was planning a spur of the moment suicide run, he would have tackled her and held her to the ground until the Germans had been defeated or until he could haul her away from the front line.

She laughed lowly then, and some of the light came back into her eyes. "I am waiting for the day when Winters realizes you are the one he has been looking for and adopts you," she said lowly. "What a time we all will have then."

Ron looked up at the sun in the sky and tried not to think about how much closer they would be in the same platoon. He didn't know if he could physically handle that.

She chuckled quietly and slid her helmet off of her head, letting it fall beside her, and leaned back against the wall. She closed her eyes and sighed, and Ron watched as she grew less tense and gave into the fatigue. "I think she ran back to the Russians," she said, her eyes still closed. "I read her file. She has a sister in St. Petersburg. Or, had a sister." She opened her eyes and turned to look at him. "Do you have siblings?"

Ron raised his eyebrows. "Four. Three sisters and a brother, all older."

"Ah, the baby of the family," she said with a grin, and he couldn't help but smile a little. "I never would have guessed."

He snorted. "I don't advertise it."

Then she slipped back into her calculative reverie. "Siblings make us do strange things. We hate them, but we love them. I loved my brother." She smiled softly to herself, and Ron watched the corner of her mouth curve upwards. "He was annoying and got us into trouble, but we depended on each other, until..." She shrugged, her eyes becoming hard again, the smile gone from her face. "We do anything for our brothers and sisters, anything we... can..."

Her voice died away, and her eyes grew larger, looking past Ron's shoulder in a trance, her mouth frozen around the last syllables she had uttered. Karolina reached out a hand and grabbed onto Ron's arm, and startled, he put his hand on hers.

"What is it?" he said, but she didn't budge. He shook her a little, and her head wobbled. "Karolina, what is it?"

She seemed to come back from the haze, but all the color had drained from her face. "Katya's sister, she was taken prisoner," she said, swallowing dryly. "By the Germans, in 1942, sent to a labor camp in the Black Forest. They have her sister." She looked at him then, her gaze equal parts furious and self-loathing. "They have leverage. They have her in their pocket.  _Mein Gott, auch das SIS nicht kannte_ ,  _es war nicht in ihren Dateien, war es in den amerikanischen Dateien..._ "

She rambled off into German, her mind going a mile a minute as she stood up, her hands shaking. Ron rose up alongside her and climbed out of the foxhole, leaning back in to give her a hand up. She was shaking her head back and forth as she spoke to herself in her native tongue, holding her helmet in her hand, and she turned without warning and began to jog towards the small collection of tents that held the company's headquarters. He caught up to her quickly and matched her pace, slowing down as they came within walking distance of Nixon's tent.

"They did not know, the SIS somehow did not know," she explained in English. "It was in her American file, but not the British one. The Nazis have her sister. Otherwise, she would never do it, she hates Germans." She laughed bitterly at that, slapping her palms against her thighs. "She killed Liesel, and probably Claude. She told the operative where to find me in Aldbourne, and where to find me in London, probably. It is so obvious,  _so obvious,_ and I did not even see it, I did not see it..."

Ron felt ice water wash through his stomach. Medvedeva was the one who had been good at navigation, had kept all of the maps necessary for the operatives' movements, had coordinated them to go towards the hedgerows after Carentan, and for a brief moment, Ron could see her entire plan folding out in front of him. Of course Medvedeva had led them to that clearing. She probably had a German operative waiting for her behind the hill, waiting for her to break away from the 502nd as soon as the firing started. No one would have been watching her for fear of getting shot. For the first time since the invasion, he felt panic invade his head. Karolina had come that close to going across the enemy lines, of being taken, of being killed for bounty. Medvedeva had been a snake in wolf's clothing since she had arrived in Aldbourne so many months ago.

"We need to get you to Nixon, now," Ron said, grabbing her arm and hustling her towards the intelligence man's tent. "You need to tell him all of this." He wasn't going to leave her now. He knew Nixon would feel the same way.

Karolina practically ripped off the flap of the intelligence tent when she reached it, and Ron followed her in to find Colonel Sink standing over the makeshift desk Nixon had rigged up with a few abandoned trunks, watching as Ella quickly hammered out messages into her Enigma machine, the sweat visible on the girl's forehead. She looked up and read Karolina's face immediately. "I know," she said. "I thought about it as soon as I left. We have been careless."

Colonel Sink spat into the dirt, his face murderous. "So, you mean to tell me that both of y'all knew that Medvedeva had a German connection, but neither of y'all suspected that she would turn tail and run back to Berlin?"

"Sir, we all have German connections," Karolina said, straightening up. "It's why we are here. It's why we are operatives."

Colonel Sink shook his head, and then his eyes snapped towards Ron. "What are you doing here?"

"I saw Medvedeva run towards the German line," he said.

Sink turned puce. "And none of y'all thought to shoot her down as she went?" he raged. "Don't you think it strange that one of ours runs towards Germans like they hold the salvation of your soul?"

"We didn't know, sir," Ron said automatically. He wanted to touch Karolina on the shoulder for reassurance, the way she was trembling, but he didn't dare risk anything in front of Sink. "I apologize, sir."

"Get the hell out of this tent, Speirs," Sink said, glaring the man down. "You don't got security clearance. "Abruzza, Schütze, y'all plant it and tell me everything you know, right now."

Ron turned his back on the group and ducked under the tent flap, feeling utterly foolish and fighting the urge to track down Medvedeva and rip her to shreds with his bare hands.

* * *

Everything was going to shit. Ella had dragged up Katya's trunk from the depths of the pile on the trucks, and they had broken open the lock to find it totally empty except for one small blue pill rolling around in the corner. Karolina had plucked it up and held it to the light.  _Pervitin_. Of course. It made sense. She was just as deep in the Nazi pocket as Karolina had been. No wonder she had known what Karolina was taking every few hours.

Mark had radioed in and yelled at them for thirty minutes straight, interrogating them about Katya's last words and where she had last been sighted, admonishing them for not being more aware, and questioning whether they were going to flee to Berlin at the next opportunity. Karolina had slammed the receiver down after he had said that. She had to draw the line somewhere.

Nixon had brought up maps of the surrounding area and pinned red markers to where the neighboring German troops were hiding out, querying each of them on whether Katya would be bold enough to hook up with an entire platoon or whether they thought she could be meeting someone - a handler, perhaps. Ella had gotten so frustrated by the lack of intel that she had gone outside and smashed apart a few K-ration crates before she calmed down and burst into tears. Karolina had to rub her on the back for a while before she would stop crying.

Karolina felt blindsided, felt like an idiot, felt useless.  _How did you not see it, how did you not notice, she was hardly around the past few days and neither was Ella but at least Ella has a viable alibi, you just chose to ignore Katya's absence and now look what's happened. You're going hang for this, they're going to hang you for treason if the Nazis don't get their hands on you first, and the likelihood of that is extremely high right now, now that Katya has run to her friends in Berlin._

Even after Ella had given up and gone to sleep, even after Nixon had shrugged his shoulders and bowed out, she stayed awake, pouring over the maps and files and photographs of Katya in Russia and mentally punching herself over and over again.  _Your fault your fault your fault your fault your fault..._

A noise outside the tent broke her from her daze, and she stood up immediately from her perch in front of Nixon's desk. It was a metallic clink, the sound of a safety being pressed off on a handgun, and Karolina reached for her silent pistol on her belt. She had been expecting this, there was no way Katya wouldn't have sent others after her and Ella. Katya knew that they would figure it out as soon as the battle ended.

She leveled her gun towards the entrance of the tent and swallowed the lump in her throat, steadying her hand. The flap of the tent wavered, and she readied herself to shoot whoever and whatever came through the opening.  _This could be it,_ she thought to herself. The tent could be surrounded. Ella had said she would keep lookout, but it wouldn't be difficult to sneak up behind one woman in the darkness and slit her throat.

There was a slight rustle, and then a woman's hand drew back the fabric. "Don't shoot me," Ella's voice said from the darkness, and Karolina let the pistol drop to the trunk with a clatter.

"You are going to give me a heart attack," Karolina fussed as Ella's head poked into the tent. The look on the other girl's face took her next words out of her mouth. "What? What is it?"

Ella just shook her head and stepped back into the night, pulling back the flap to allow another person to enter the tent, and though Karolina recognized the dirty blonde hair and the simpering expression on the woman who stepped into the tent, she could not believe what she was seeing.

Standing in front of her, looking worn and half beat to death was Liesel Neuner, very much alive and wearing a furious expression on her face.


	18. The Smoky Blues

Chapter Eighteen

The Smoky Blues

_Berlin, Germany_

_June 1944_

Karl Droessler, Lieutenant Colonel in the Abwehr and in the SS, was a simple man. He performed his job with careful precision and expected nothing but the best in return from his employees. He always referred to the operating agents under his control as employees; it seemed to inspire a capitalistic spirit in their work.  _Don't think about the numbers on your charts as human beings, the names on the folders that cross my desk as people. Think of these things as objects, items that must be inventoried, put in their proper place, and if necessary, liquidated for the good of the company. The good of the company comes before everything. One cannot be paid adequately if the company is floundering. It is our duty to keep this company afloat._

Even if it was currently headed by the most idiotic, fanatic CEO of all time, the Good of the Company was his life's purpose, and he was prepared to make hard choices if it meant that the Company thrived.

Every day he arose and regarded his reflection in the mirror above his bathroom sink. He was a nondescript middle-aged man, someone the average German would never suspect headed covert intelligence operations for the Third Reich. He was thoroughly normal in his habits, kept fit by going on long runs and rowing on the Greater Wannsee on the weekends, and still had most of his hair and his wits about him. It was vital that one's wits never failed them in this Company, surrounded by the rabble and underwhelming lackeys that had filed into various governmental positions after the Fuhrer's coup. The stares of envy he received on a daily basis from men prowling the hallway outside of his office was enough to tell him that if he ever faltered there would be a pack of rabid dogs waiting to devour him and scatter his bones over the streets of Berlin. He always smiled as pleasantly as possible at those scowling faces. Open hostility was just not polite, something his mother would have never allowed. Back when it mattered, Karl was a member of a low-ranking aristocratic family. His title may have been stripped, but despite the sea changes around him, his manners remained impeccable.

His main office was situated on the top floor of a nondescript building in the heart of Berlin's political district. He had chosen the building because an abandoned Jewish department store occupied the first two floors. Karl had noticed that passersby often avoided looking at the broken glass storefronts, often crossed the street to walk on the other side as if physical nearness to the verboten establishment would implicate them as Jew-lovers. A building in the middle of Berlin that had become nearly invisible was a perfect place to establish the headquarters of his intelligence operations.

And they were very much  _his_ intelligence operations - not the Fuhrer's, or Werner von Blomberg's, or Walther Schellenberg's. The Abwehr was his and had been his before the Beer Hall Putsch, before anyone began to wag their tongues about an upstart Austrian named Hitler, before anyone thought that the Third Reich's  _modus operandi_ would not be appreciated internationally. Karl had built the intelligence community from the ground-up, took pride in the efficiency of his employees, and absolutely refused to let government goons stick their noses into his business. He only got away with that type of behavior because of the steady stream of great results his employees delivered every day. The Reich would crumble without the Abwehr - Hitler knew it, Karl knew it, and so did every foreign agent mixed up in this great mess of a war.

Karl's office was a testament to his special privileges. He was a voracious reader, a lover of music, a proprietor of fine arts and furniture, and didn't give a single whit if something was made by a Jew or an American or a Negro or a Frenchman or what-have-you; his office was a haven for banned books and art and old records that had been deemed "degenerate music", a place where he could put on a Cole Porter record and read "A Farewell to Arms" in peace. He loved his office more than his own home, often invited friends to drop off belongings that they felt could incriminate them if discovered and gave denounced pieces of art a refuge from the uncouth and uneducated.

The morning had dawned bright and hot, and Karl stopped by his favorite patisserie before heading to the office, in search of a  _pain au chocolat_  and a piping hot espresso to start his day. He had a very long interview scheduled for mid-morning and nothing bolstered his spirits like a good breakfast. Once the man behind the counter had wrapped up his three croissants and watched him down the espresso, Karl accepted his sharp salute and made his way down the street, tipping his hat to the ladies that passed by on the sidewalk.

The office was already busy with phones ringing between desks, the sounds of typewriters clacking and the haze of cigarette smoke floating into the hallway where his office door stood. Karl waved the smoke away with a hand and raised his eyebrows as he unlocked his door, giving his secretary, Emile, a sideways look. The man had already polished off three cigarettes, and it was hardly nine in the morning.

"You are going to give yourself a heart attack if you chain-smoke like that," Karl said as the key turned in the lock. Emile shrugged, like he always did, but rose to help his boss with his package. Karl waved him away. "I can handle this. Alert me when the Russian arrives."

He raised the blinds inside of his office and let in the sunlight, checked to see that the orchids that sat on the table next to his favorite leather armchair were thriving, and shrugged off his gray coat and kicked off his jackboots. He rolled up the ends of his pants and slipped on his favorite tobacco-colored loafers, walked over to his record player, and selected a Josephine Baker album. Karl had seen her perform in Paris some years back, when Paris was still the dirty, messy enclave of liberal spirit that had fostered artists and musicians on the fringes of society. He admired the American Negro woman who had turned herself into a  _très veritable_  Frenchwoman. Identity, at its very core, was changeable, malleable, and Josephine with her cheetah and banana skirt was now a French spy. He quite liked that.

He dropped the needle onto the record and turned the volume down low, just loud enough that the music would absorb the incessant noise that came from outside his office door. He sat down behind his desk and gazed the intimidating stack of papers that sat in his inbox. He checked his watch - nine-fifteen. Well, the Russian had another thirty minutes. He could tackle about half of the stack in that time.

He looked up from his papers and pen marks when a knock sounded on the door. He checked his wristwatch - ten o'clock on the dot. A little tardy, but he expected nothing less. "Enter," he called out, removing his reading glasses from the bridge of his nose.

Emile opened the door inward and motioned for the visitor to walk into the room, and in stepped the surliest woman that Karl had ever seen. Her long blonde hair was pinned up into a severe bun and she wore the black shirt and pants of the British SIS, a bold move on German soil. She took three steps into the long rectangle of his office, gave the place a once-over and frowned deeply. Karl felt a wide smile stretch across his face as he rose up from his chair.

"Ekaterina," he said, opening his arms. "Welcome to Berlin. Please, come have a seat by me."

The Russian woman walked forward slowly, taking in the museum-quality art hanging on the wall, the record turning on the Victrola, the leather-bound books that filled the shelves around them, scanning everything with a critical eye. Karl extended his hand and she grabbed it after a moment's hesitation with a painfully tight grip. He smiled as she took a seat in front of his desk, her face darkening by the second.

"So," he said pleasantly, settling back down in his chair. "What do you think of my office?"

She sneered. "Excessive," she said, her accent thick. He chuckled quietly to himself.

"Yes, that is what nearly everyone says," he replied. "'So many books!', or 'So many records!'." He folded his hands on top of the desk. "But you, my dear, are a little more observant than the average office worker. You can see more than other people can see in a lifetime. So, why don't you tell me what you really think?"

The woman narrowed her eyes at his game but took in the desk and the furniture beside them, her gaze flickering between the shelf  of books nearby and the record player under the window. "Highly organized," she began. "Borderline obsessive. Well-read, disregards the rules." He nodded his head at that one, a spark coming into his eye. "Equestrian."

He raised his eyebrows. "Really! Now that is one that I haven't gotten before," he said with a grin. "Tell me how you came to that conclusion."

The woman looked down at the discarded jackboots sitting next to his coat rack. "Horse shit on the bottom of your boots," she said.

Karl was impressed. "Ekaterina, you are a cut above the rest," he said, scooting the pastry box on the corner of his desk towards her. "Croissant?"

"No," she said, her face stoic. He shrugged and opened the box, peered at the two remaining  _pain au chocolats_ , and tossed it to the side.

"Now," he began. "Let's not dawdle any more than we already have. I have been reliably informed by the powers that be that you have chosen to come to Berlin and inform us on the 101st Paratrooper Division's movements in Normandy after serving there for some time. It cannot be disregarded that you have been stationed with that division since December of 1943, nor can it be ignored that your decision to defect to us has come after a single extended offer by one of our men on the front." He paused and took a sip from his glass of water. "Your motives are based on pure emotion, or so we gather - you are deeply concerned about the welfare of your sister."

The Russian nodded, her eyes squinting as she listened carefully to the rapid German coming out of his mouth. "Yes, that is why," she said.

"Then we have a simple solution," Karl said, spreading his hands out on the desk. "You tell us what we want to know - give us dates, times, statistics, profiles - and we will take you in as one of our own. You will work for us, doing all sorts of things, I imagine, and in turn we will provide a safe house for you and your sister to live in until the end of the war."

The Russian looked skeptical. Karl knew that she wouldn't take him at his word, and he rose up and walked over to the record player, which had finished the Josephine Baker album. He lifted the vinyl from the turntable and slipped it back into its cardboard sleeve. "Do you like music, Ekaterina?"

There was no reply. He shrugged. "I have never been to Russia, but I imagine they do not hand out jazz albums to their residents often." He turned around and looked at her. "Am I correct?"

"We listen to Russian composers," she said tersely.

"Ah, yes," he replied, turning back to his collection of records. "They're trying to do something like that over here. 'Only true Germans should be played!'" He shook his head. "It is failing, of course. We Germans are natural music lovers. We are fascinated that those on the very bottom of society's rung can make such wondrous music." He placed a Billie Holiday record on the player and set the needle, waiting for the blue jazz to come out of the speaker before turning back to the Russian, who looked annoyed. "Tell me, how is my Karolina doing?"

Medvedeva tilted her head. "What?"

"Is she well? Does she fit in with the men?" He walked slowly towards his desk and perched on the edge. "Does she seem to like her work?"

The Russian blinked once and then screwed up her face. "I don't understand," she said. "You sent the Abwehr woman to kill her in Aldbourne. You made me deliver the letter full of ash."

Karl sighed and pushed himself off of the desk. "Have you ever loved someone so much that you couldn't bear to stand the thought of them with someone else?" He tapped his fingers on the hardwood of the bookshelf behind the desk. "That you would rather kill them with your own hands than see them leave you?"

Medvedeva looked disgusted, and Karl held up a finger. "You misunderstand me," he said. "I love Karolina very much. I love her so much, in fact, that I have to end her life. But I don't want to kill her. For me, it would be as if I killed my own child." He paced behind his desk. "In fact, it feels very much like that - as if I have a child who is doing so much harm that I must make the difficult decision to let her die for the good of the world."

The Russian was silent, her face less stony now, a hint of fear behind her eyes. He dropped down into the chair behind his desk and raised his hands. "What am I to do?" he said. "Other than track my child, acquaint myself with her friends, and watch her every move?"

Medvedeva was silent for a few minutes before she cleared her throat. "What do you want me to tell you?" she said, her tone muted.

Karl picked up one of his fountain pens and pulled a blank sheet of letter paper from his desk. "Let us begin with the people she loves the most," he said with a smile. "And we shall progress from there."

* * *

Karl had first seen her in a bar, one of those places where the tabletops were always sticky, where the man at the door charged a cover fee to enter the building. He would never have patronized such a place had he not been meeting an informant who he had planted in the fledgling Nazi Party. Regardless, he had been sitting in a dim corner waiting for the man when a young girl had stepped onto the low stage across the room and sat down on the bench in front of a beat-up piano. When she had put her fingers to the keys, the melodic and beautiful jazz notes came pouring across the room towards him, and he lit a cigarette and really noticed her for the first time.

Seventeen years old, if not a little younger. Ratty long brown hair, a tattered dress that had been mended three times over, but with bright eyes that radiated intensity and intelligence. She was entirely focused on her piece and ignored the wolf-whistles from a table of drunken Brownshirts, her hands keeping pace with the trumpeter and the half-rate songstress. Her skill level was higher than normal for her age. The low lights near the singer enhanced the circles under her eyes, the sharpness of her cheekbones.

Karl approached her after a lull in the performance. She watched him coming towards her with a hostile glare, no doubt used to propositions from randy older men, but he simply asked her if he could see the music sheet she was reading from. He was curious about the composer.

She had smiled then, a private one meant for herself, one that radiated smugness. "I wasn't reading from a sheet," she said. "I've memorized all of Holiday's pieces."

"What's your name?"

The wariness came back into her face. "Schütze. Why?"

He took out one of the calling cards that had his name and telephone number embossed on the front in glossy black ink and slid it across the top of the piano. "If you would like a real job, call me," he said. She had taken the card, looked at it for a moment, and then slid it inside the front of her dress. "You could do some valuable work for your country."

Only a day passed before he had received a call from her. The voice on the line was timid, as if she wasn't sure whether he was playing a practical joke on her. "Herr Droessler? This is Karolina Schütze. I would like to come work for you. I can do a lot of office things, and I know how to type."

"You won't be typing at this job," Karl had replied.

There had been silence on her end of the line. "I don't do things like that for money," she had said, her voice dry.

"No, no, you misunderstand me," he had replied. "I think you would be a good candidate for collecting information for my business. Are you still interested?"

She exhaled slowly and seemed to think it over for a moment before answering. "Yes, but can my brother come, too?"

And that was how Karl Droessler ended up with two seventeen-year-old troublemakers working in his office, dropping ink bottles onto the sidewalk below and generally raising hell as he molded them into his pet darlings, his two little Rottweilers. Karolina was the smarter of the pair - she was the one Philippe came to for advice, and her logic was always sound. Philippe was brawny and soulful, the one who always cared deeply about the job he was doing, the one who wanted to please Droessler the most. Karolina couldn't give a damn if Droessler was happy or upset with her results as long as she thought they were satisfactory.

Three months went by until they deemed him trustworthy enough to tell him that they were homeless. They had been kicked out of their orphanage by the head matron after Philippe had punched another boy in the face for grabbing his sister. They asked if they could stay in the office overnight, as it was beginning to get colder in the evenings, and Droessler promptly took them home and set them up in the spare bedrooms of his too-large house.

* * *

"She has a romance?" Karl said, baffled by the idea.

Medvedeva shifted in her seat, visible discomforted by the topic. "I don't know exactly, she has a few men she is close with," the Russian replied. "There is Lewis Nixon, the intelligence officer of the E Company, and then a man from D Company, Ronald Speirs, who hates her but is around her always."

"Mmm- _hmm_ ," Karl hummed. "And what of the other spies? Does she speak to them?"

Medvedeva nodded slowly. "Ella Abruzza, the Italian, is her close friend." She paused, but Karl motioned for her to continue. "The Italian girl is always with her. They have become sisterly."

Karl inhaled deeply through his nose and leaned back in his chair. "Now that is a particularly interesting word to use," he said, his eyes glazing over. " _Sisterly._ "

* * *

More than anything, he remembered being so proud of her, so fiercely proud. In the Abwehr, she was a holy terror. She could track down foreign agents to their exact coordinates based on a whim, could see through cheap tricks and feints from evasive spies, and once even solved a mystery involving a stolen bomb based on paper trail alone. Karolina was a testament to his skills. She was someone he could take to Party meetings and show off to the other boorish generals and secretaries.  _My Karolina can take out any agent that crossest the German border. My Karolina can shoot the stars out of the sky._

But there was another Karolina, one who was confident enough in her abilities of subterfuge to think that she could sneak across town in the dead of night and return in the morning without him noticing. An investigation through her room one day told him everything he needed to know - a pair of ripped stockings, a tube of well-used bright crimson lipstick that had never graced her lips in the light of day, a pair of dancing heels that were worn down to the wooden sole. Karl gathered all these objects and called her into the office.

" _Liebchen_ ," he said, setting the objects in front of her on the desk. Her youthful twenty-year-old face never budged from its calm mask. "This is simply unacceptable. You are an employee of the Reich. You cannot be seen at these establishments mixing with Negroes and Jews. What if you had been caught up in a raid?"

She didn't speak once, not even to defend herself. Karl saw the tell-tale glimmer of emotion behind her eyes and sighed. "Is this because of Philippe? Because we sent him back to Hamburg to tie up loose ends?"

"No," she had said then. The word was dry and cold. "I'm bored."

Karl had slammed his hand down on the desk hard enough to knock the cheap heels onto the floor. Karolina had stiffened and flinched but stood her ground. "You're  _bored?_ " he had said, his voice steely. "After all I give you, you tell me to my face that you are  _bored by it?_ "

She had gnawed on her lower lip as he rose up and shook his head. "What would you like to do, then? What would keep you entertained? Roaming the streets at night, keeping company with the rabble in the ghettos? Return to the bar, play a little tune on the piano? Have a fast time with a colonel for a few marks? ' _I don't do those kinds of things for money'._ "

She had gritted her teeth then, her face strained. "No, sir," she had said slowly. "I don't."

"Then get back to work," Karl said, pointing at the door. "And hope that I forget we ever had this conversation."

* * *

The Russian struggled to find the right words for her next statement. "I do not know if she wants to live."

Karl gently placed his pen on top of his notes and folded his hands. "Pardon?"

"It is difficult," the woman said, waving her hands vaguely. "I cannot explain it, not with the right German words."

He smiled tersely. "Try."

The woman ran a tongue over her teeth. "It is almost... she fights very hard, harder than anyone. She volunteers for the dangerous tasks. She is always injured, she acts as if it does not hurt her..." The woman trailed off. "It is like she wants to die. But she fights so hard."

Karl nodded slowly, resisting the urge to close his eyes in front of his guest. "You are right," he said. "She never wanted to die for the Reich's cause. But she never wanted to live, either."

* * *

The real trouble had begun when Philippe had returned from Hamburg, his face ashen and his appetite missing. Things had soured between Karl and his little darling since she had declared her boredom with the Abwehr, and Karl believed that a pleasant family dinner would cure all ills. He had even gone out of his way to procure some hot chocolate for the twins, a favorite from their teenage years. As he watched Philippe pick listlessly at his roast hen while Karolina downed three glasses of wine in a twenty-minute span, he sighed and set down his water glass.

"And how did you find Hamburg?" he asked, and Philippe froze. He was never clever enough to learn how to arrange his face into a mask like his sister.

The boy swallowed dryly. "It's changed," he said, stealing a glance at Karolina, who was busy staring out the window across the table and didn't acknowledge his look. "I hardly recognized it. All our neighbors are... they're gone."

"Gone?" Karl asked, his tone encouraging. Philippe shook his head. The silver skulls on his black uniform glinted in the candlelight. "Where did they go?"

"To the camps," Karolina said bluntly. She looked down the table at them, her eyes dull. "We lived in the Jewish Quarter."

"Ah," Karl said, shaking his head. "A shame. But necessary to the function of our state. Now a nice German family can move into those homes, have room to thrive."

"The Katzes are Germans," Karolina said quietly, swirling the wine in her glass. "So are the Loebs, and the Dreyfuses, and the Rubinskys."

Karl gave her a hard look, but she refused to meet his gaze. "I think you've had enough wine tonight,  _Liebchen_ ," he said firmly. "This attitude does not suit you."

She laughed dryly and dropped her glass back onto the table, splattering droplets of wine onto the white tablecloth. "Nothing suits me," she said under her breath before she rose up from her chair. Karolina took a long, searching look at Philippe before she turned her back to table and walked out of the dining room, the heels of her boots clicking on the wood as she went.

Karl sighed and sent a pitying glance towards Philippe. "You must understand, I do feel for the loss of your neighbors," he said. "But what can one do? It is necessary for the health of our state."

Philippe shrugged, looking deeply uncomfortable as a he picked lint off of the sleeve of his SS uniform. "We used to play with the kids next door, you know, when we were in that orphanage. They were kind to us, gave us food when we were starving. At least it felt as if we were starving." The boy let out a shaky sigh. "And we found her, Eliza, the girl who lived next door. She was hiding in another neighbor's attic, all alone. When they brought her out, she was covered in soot, she had been hiding inside the chimney shaft... She couldn't see outside, hadn't seen sunlight in months..."

Karl pushed the wine decanter towards the boy, and Philippe poured out a large glass. He took a sip and set the crystal on the table, his hands shaking.

"When the Hitler Youth came, we were excited. Or, I was excited. Karolina was just thrilled to be fed three solid meals a day." Philippe's ears were going red. "I liked the camaraderie, you know? The chance to be with boys. I had always been stuck with my sister, and then I get told I am going camping? That we're going on a weekend hike? It was incredible to me."

Karl remembered just how green around the gills the boy had gone before he took another sip of wine. "They made me shoot Eliza. I tried to do it quickly, before I could protest. I wanted to do it, so she wouldn't feel it. I tried to shoot her between the eyes. I only got the side of her head, at first, and then she started screaming, and there was so much blood..."

Karl had stopped him there, had gotten up and laid a hand on the boy's shoulder. "You did the right thing," he had said, shaking him a little. "You did as you were ordered. You did the right thing." He had sent the boy upstairs then, to go to bed, to get some rest, but he had really wanted him out of his sight so that he no longer had to watch his hands shake and his voice falter. He heard Philippe's footsteps cross over the landing above, not towards his room that faced the west, but towards his sister's room that faced the east. Karl listened as the door creaked open and then quietly clicked shut.

He summoned Gretchen, the little kitchen girl, to the table. "Send up the hot chocolate in an hour's time," he said gently, smiling at the timid teenager. "And put this in their teapot."

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a vial of little blue pills, shaking them lightly before dropping the glass into Gretchen's outstretched hand. She looked at them suspiciously before she slipped them into her apron. "What are they, sir?"

"Sleeping pills," he said, a beatific smile on his face.

The effect was instant, or at least it seemed that way to Karl. Karolina dove into her work at the Abwehr in a way she hadn't since Karl had saved her from the dive bar. She had to be dragged away from her desk at the end of the workday so that Karl could make sure she drank a glass of water and ate a solid meal at the dinner table. Not another word was spoken of the discord that had infected the household for months, and Karl found that he preferred the new medicated Karolina. He ordered Gretchen to grind up a blue pill to be steeped in the morning pot of coffee that Karolina took in her room every day of the week except for Sundays. Sundays were a day of rest.

Philippe, however, was a different case. He reacted poorly to the pills, becoming manic in his movements and paranoid of others. Having been stationed with a marauding band of head-hunters that operated within his SS division, Philippe was thankfully out of sight most of the week, which was all fine with Karl. The boy's twitchy movements had begun to grate on his nerves.

Karolina began to grow ragged around the edges. She wasn't sleeping - Karl listened to her footsteps pace above him through her long white nights of insomnia, a side effect of the pep-up pills he had been feeding her. It had been two months since the disastrous dinner when he decided that she needed a new project, something to cement her commitment to the Abwehr and to the Reich, something ingenious. He approached her desk on a sunny Tuesday morning and slipped the thick brown file folder onto the stack of papers inside her inbox.

She had permanent dark rings around her green eyes now, but she always looked loveliest when she was absorbed in her work. He had to tap his knuckles on the desk to drag her out of the thick dossier she was ripping through, and when she gazed up at him, her eyes were blank, lifeless. She looked like a pretty little doll.

" _Liebchen,_ " he said jovially. "I have a new project for you. Something that you will truly enjoy, I believe. A math problem of sorts."

She had blinked a few times and then coughed. "I like mathematics," she said, her voice low and grating.

"I know you do, pet. Here is what we are working on," he said. He scooted the folder off of the top of the pile and onto her desk. "A new type of camp for those who have pertinent information that is in the interest of the Reich to know. One for spies, where we can keep them alive. Like the other camps, but one that's a little more... hospitable."

She placed her hand on the file and drummed her fingers on the brown paper. "Lower Bavaria?"

Karl grinned and stroked her head. "Wonderful. A brilliant location."

* * *

Looking back on those days, Karl was always shocked that he didn't see the warning signs sooner. The sudden way that Karolina seemed concerned about Karl's personal schedule outside of work, the conversations at the dinner table that focused on the Denmark's status as a neutral protectorate state, the way Philippe began to come home more frequently, spending time in the library researching maps of Hamburg for what he said was a clearance project. It all became clear the morning that neither twin showed up to breakfast after a Friday evening of good wine and conversation around the roaring fire in the parlor.

Karl sat at the long table, waiting for Gretchen to bring out his boiled egg and wondering where the children were. He was starving, a little bleary-eyed from the wine the night before, and growing rather irritated in the way that everyone was making him wait that morning.

"Gretchen!" he hollered towards the kitchen, and soon the little maid came scurrying out from behind the servants' door down the hallway. "What is taking so long with the repast? And where are those two troublemakers? Tell them to come downstairs immediately."

Gretchen opened and closed her mouth like a fish, gaping at the stairwell behind her. "But, sir," she said quietly. "They left this morning for their retreat."

Karl had been drumming his silver fork against the cream place mat, and he let the cutlery drop down from his hand. "Their  _what_?"

_Oh, did you not know, sir? That they had gone with other young people to the north of the country for a day on the coast? They were packing last night, after you went to bed, excuse me, retired to your room... They said you knew and that they didn't want to wake you this morning with the sound of the bags, so they left them by the door overnight, and this morning they were off rather early, dressed in coats for the cold weather up there, you see... Isn't it silly, though, to go North for a beach holiday in this cold weather, I'd rather go south if we could... sir?_

Karl had risen up, knocked Gretchen out of the way and stormed to his study. The locked doorknob had been picked open, and he pushed the door wide and took a quick look around the room. Nothing looked suspicious, of course - Karolina was too good to be sloppy. He opened the drawer where he kept passports and papers. The twins had taken everything.

 _I am going to kill them._ That had been his first thought. He had pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and dialed up Emile, told him to dispatch a squad to Hamburg as quickly as possible and find his children. He walked out of his house, got into his car and began to drive North. He opened the glove compartment and loaded his emergency Luger. He stewed as he drove through the back roads, forcing wagons off of the road, his neck hot. He focused on Philippe's face as a he steered, his breathing becoming even.  _I am going to kill HIM._

He didn't remember the majority of the drive, and he hardly remembered entering the city. When he had stormed into the SS headquarters he had met a crowd of reticent officers. No one had seen them, the SS lieutenant was ashamed to report, and no one had suspected that Philippe was up to something. He had seemed excited for his furlough, just as every soldier had seemed excited to go home for a little while. They had scrambled the troops all over the city and they were checking every building.

Karl had blinked a few times, the fog clearing from his mind. "They are to be arrested for treason," he had said. "Shoot the man on sight but give the girl over to me. She is too valuable to be killed."

They searched all morning, but Karolina was too clever to leave a trace. Karl began to grow irritated. He would never hear the end of it if his own protege deluded him, deceived her teacher. And so he thought about the thick coats and the maps of the Denmark coastline that Philippe had left out on his study's table, and he headed for the Elbe. The fog was thick but clearing, and as Karl crossed a bridge, he had spied them hurrying around a little fishing boat, one small enough to avoid detection along the coasts of Germany and Denmark. Philippe had been untying a boat from its tethers, ignorant of Karl's presence on the bridge a few yards away. Karolina had been sitting on the boat's deck, organizing maps and hiding away a bundle of groceries into a hatch. The sight of her about to betray him made him grab the Luger out of his pocket.

He had raised his pistol and shot Philippe Schütze through the chest, watched as the soldier's body toppled into the water between the dock and the boat, listened to Karolina scream like he had never heard before, sighed as she tried to haul Philippe's body over the side of the boat. The screaming attracted the incompetent SS guards, who swarmed onto the dock and grabbed his Karolina and hauled her away as she sobbed and clawed at the skin on their faces. Karl watched as if detached, as if his true self was floating above the scene along with Philippe's spirit, who was likely lingering to take in the drama. Karl had leaned his head back and stared into the gray skies above and smiled, Karolina's howls echoing down the empty streets.  _Better luck next time._

It took him hours for the full weight of what he had done, and the repercussions of that action, to sink in. First, Philippe was dead, which was not an issue - Karl had taken care of a traitorous insider, he half expected the Fuhrer himself to thank him for getting his hands dirty. But in that act, he had robbed himself of his prized possession, and he looked down at it as she gasped silently into her knees on the wet cell floor. He had spent the last thirty minutes kicking her rib cage, listening to her scream.  _Spare the rod, spoil the child._ That's what the English said, right? He had clearly spoiled the child.

" _Liebchen_ , what a disappointment," he had said, winded, after he was finished. He was shocked to find that he was truly sad. "I trusted you, pet. And look at what you have done."

Karolina had met his gaze then, her face dirty and her eyes bloodshot. Karl found himself recoiling. Her eyes were snakelike as she stared him down. He didn't recognize the person that had taken over her body, that had betrayed him so well.

" _Ich bin nicht Ihr Haustier_."

Karl had turned to the attaché from the State Department. "Prison, I think," he had said lightly. He had turned on his heel and walked away, disappointed at his loss.

The second repercussion had hit him as he had climbed back into the cab of his car. He was alone again. The idea of returning to an empty, quiet home - save for Gretchen the church mouse - was so abhorrent that he thought of moving into his office briefly before shaking himself and starting his car. Let Karolina rot in jail for a few months before bringing her back, tethering her to her work and washing any idea of independence out of her mind. That would do the trick, and then she would move in again, grateful for his mercy, and all would be well.

Had he known that would be the last time he would lay eyes on his Karolina for years, he might have returned and stroked the tears away from her cheek.

* * *

The Russian had grown quiet behind him. Karl had become lost in his reveries while staring out of his office window. The good people of the Reich were about their daily business beneath him, walking on cobbled streets that would be crumbling if it were not for him, eating bread that would turn to ashes in their mouths if it were not for him. He didn't seek thanks or praise for the things he did, only basic respect. He wondered if the Russian was afraid of him. He turned towards the woman and saw the expression of disgust she was trying to hide.

"The people we love cause us to turn into monsters," he said, returning to his desk. "Think of all the things we do for them and the lack of thanks we receive in return." He motioned towards her. "Look at you. Sent to Siberia because your father wanted to read the Bible. The  _Bible_!" He chuckled and shook his head. "So many books out there to read, and he chooses that. And so, the family must suffer. You toil in Siberia for his actions, and the state tells you,  _Do you want me to love you again? Then come fight for me._ "

"And then they arrest your family and put them to death, all except your sister. What thanks we get for doing the hardest things for the people we love."

The woman across from him was quiet for a moment before she cleared her throat. "But I would not have beaten my sister because she wanted freedom," she said in a quiet voice.

"Freedom is an illusion," Karl said placidly. The record player on the wall scratched as the needle reached the middle of the vinyl, and Karl rose up and walked over to it. "Is Karolina free now?"

The Russian thought about it. "No."

"Exactly," he said. He took the record off of the player and flipped it. "The British have her on a tight leash, tighter than the one she wore when she was with the Abwehr. All because she betrayed me first."

"So, how do you drive a willful child home?" he asked. "How do you inspire someone to come searching for the thing that they would never return to otherwise?"

The Russian woman shrugged, and Karl pursed his lips.

"The cozy place they have landed in must become inhospitable. The old ways must look better than the new ones. Emotions must be stirred up again from where they lay dormant."

The Russian nodded thoughtfully. "You cause them pain."

Karl grinned, and the sun emerged from behind the clouds, illuminating the dark wood of his desk. " _Exactly_."


	19. The Nun's Tale

                                                Chapter Nineteen                                                

The Nun's Tale

_Normandy, France_

_June 1944_

Liesel sat on an empty crate next to Karolina's desk, wincing as she lowered her body down onto the stained wood. She looked at Karolina and Ella with bloodshot eyes, taking in their dirt-covered faces and startled expressions. "I'm so glad both of you are alive." She rotated the cup of coffee in her hands and leaned her face into the steam. “ _Oh, das ist schön.”_

            Nixon took a long drag from his side flask and offered it to the blonde Austrian. She waved it away. "No thank you." Her eyes traveled around the small audience that had gathered in the tent after Ella had raised the alarm that the spy had wandered into their camp. "I suppose you would like for me to tell you how I got here?"

            Colonel Sink rubbed his hand over his stubble, his dark mood radiating from his eyes. "Enlighten us."

            It happened like this: once Liesel and Katya disembarked from the truck in the French countryside outside of Caen, Liesel immediately felt discomforted. As she and Katya walked the miles down the congested road that led into the town, she couldn't shake the paranoia that made the back of her neck tingle. Something was wrong, she just didn't know what.

            "Apart from the obvious conclusion that you were spying in enemy territory?" said Karolina, one eyebrow raised.

            Liesel took a small sip of her coffee, ladylike as always. "Yes," she said, ignoring Karolina’s sarcastic tone. "The vibration between two people, the instinct -- when I walked with Katya, I felt as if I were walking with a tiger in a jungle. It could have ripped me apart with its claws. But I perceived that she was waiting for the right moment."

            Liesel and Katya reprised their role of relatives once they entered Caen. Unlike Sainte-Mere-Eglise, Caen was in the fullest throes of chaos when they walked into the town. German soldiers were swarming in and out of buildings, loitering in the fountained squares, playing darts in the pubs, but so were thousands of other French refugees and townspeople who had all descended on the city and found themselves trapped by the military presence. Liesel discovered a hotel in shambles near Juno Beach where she could stay for a few livres a night, Katya lodged with an elderly widow near Sword, and the two met daily in the center of town, pretending to inquire on the whereabouts of their fictional family.

            "Once the soldiers got used to seeing us every day, noticed that we only asked frantically about our 'parents', they began to avoid us," Liesel said. "I could tell they thought we were annoying, but they were softer with us than the other refugees. At first I thought it was because I was pretty."

            Ella snorted.

            "But then I began to realize that one of the officers was a little familiar with Katya." They nodded to each other every day, Liesel said. And perhaps that was nothing, perhaps it was no different than the polite nods she herself gave German soldiers, but there was something behind the man's eyes that betrayed the casual gesture. A flicker of intelligence that made her breath catch in her throat.

            So, one night, she hid in the shadows across the street from the widow's home and watched, waiting for something to happen. Liesel didn't know what to expect, but she kept the collar of her jacket turned up against the windy drizzle that was falling sideways and casting people back into their homes and shelters. She must have waited there for ten minutes before the front door of the old house opened and out stepped Katya, a fresh coat of red lipstick painted across her lips. Liesel followed Katya as the Russian left her house, meandered about the town square, and then took a winding and long path to a pub near the beaches on the edge of town. The place was swarming with German soldiers and good-time girls, and Katya seemed right at home.

            "I saw her enter the bar, and I moved closer so I could see through the big front windows of the place," Liesel said, her eyes distant. "And I watched her walk in, have her hand kissed by a German captain, and then they sat and drank wine and laughed together for an hour." She looked at the tired eyes in the tent. "That is not a crime. We do what we need to do to gain trust. But then, just as she was about to leave, he pulled a few papers from his jacket and gave them to her. Their conversation turned from flirtatious to... something else. She looked hungry, eager."

            Liesel went back to her hotel and tossed restlessly, found that she couldn't sleep. She probably picked up and put away the Enigma machine three times before she decided to speak to Katya first. She figured if the Russian had nothing to hide, then there was no reason to jump the gun and alert everyone preemptively.

            The next morning, they went for a cheap breakfast before walking around the town square. _I wish I could go out at nights,_ Liesel said. _I'm so bored._

 _Bored of working for the British?_ Katya said, her tone casual.

            Liesel sucked in her stomach. _No,_ _I miss the nightlife. In London._

Katya shrugged. _I am not bored._

Liesel shook her head and laughed, feigned ignorance. _Oh really? And what did you do last night? Go to a party?_

Katya stared at her for a moment before taking a sip of her tea. _No. I stayed home, of course._

But one _tête-à-tête_ did not a traitor make. Liesel let it drop and went about her day as normally as she could, even though there was a thread of tension between them that felt stretched to its limit. That night, she tried to track Katya again, but she lost the Russian’s trail somewhere between the widow's house and the pub. When Liesel walked back towards her hotel, she thought she saw someone who looked like Katya in the street in front of her, so she took a detour down a back alley and ducked into an empty doorway. She stood there for twenty minutes, holding her breath and hoping that the woman she had seen wasn't the Russian, hoping that she hadn't been so sloppy as to let Katya double around and encircle her. But no one ever walked down the alleyway. All she heard in those tense minutes were the sounds of stray cats howling and digging through trash for food scraps. When she returned to her hotel, she smelled like a fish market. She gave herself a quick bath with a washrag and a basin of water, and she fell into bed, utterly exhausted.

            "It was June 2nd," Liesel said. The tent was silent. "We all know what happened on June 3rd."

            Liesel woke up to the sounds of panicked shouts on the street below, and when she went to her window, it looked as if a riot had erupted on the square outside. The glass windows of storefronts were being shattered by rowdy refugees, a German truck was on fire, and all through the city she heard the screams of people making a run for cover. At first, she thought that the invasion had begun a few days early. She had already packed her bag and was preparing to decamp to the countryside, hoping to meet up with her local _Maquis_ group, but it seemed as if the _Maquis_ had decided to start without her.

            "I had been planning to reach out to Claude," she said. "And then I thought that perhaps because of the chaos, I still had time to send an Enigma message. I didn't do so before because I was paranoid of Katya somehow intercepting the message on behalf of the Germans."

            Liesel had already decided that her instincts were correct. Katya wasn't one to flirt with anyone for anything -- she took what she wanted, and she would kill if it aided her overall endgame. The only reason she would be speaking to a German soldier was if he had something that she desperately wanted, and her denials set Liesel on edge. It was time for Liesel to work on her own.

            "So, I packed quickly, leaving behind everything that would compromise me," Liesel said. "And I had just put on a pair of trousers when I heard a key turning in the lock on my door."

            Liesel crouched against the wall behind the door and withdrew her sidearm, her shirt in her hand, half-dressed and ready to pounce. Whoever was on the other side of the door was going to die, whether it was a German storm trooper or a poor French maid. She had remained inactive for too long, and she could see now that it had been a mistake to not alert the SIS, to not alert the other operatives. As soon as she shot down this intruder, she would hunt down Katya, kill her, and liberate the coastline.

            But when the door swung open, she realized that she was again a step behind. Katya walked into her room and peered at her from around the open door, a German sub-machine gun in her hand.

            "The last thing I remember is her smiling at me," Liesel said. "And then I felt so much pain, and there was a roaring in my ears. It was almost like falling asleep, but my body felt cold and numb."

            She rolled up her shirt sleeves and showed off her forearms -- her skin was mottled with deep bruising and rows of tiny stitches. "She shot me twice in this arm," Liesel said, tracking the bullet wounds with her fingers. "Twice in the abdomen, once in my right leg, and once in my neck." She brushed aside her short hair, so they could see the green and purple clotting near the bottom of her earlobe.

            "Holy shit," Nixon said, scooting closer into the light for a better look. "And you just... lay there?"

            "Well, I did, but I was in luck -- the hotel was still full of people, and they heard the commotion upstairs and came running," Liesel said. "For as long as I have disliked the French, I owe them my life now."

            A kind man in the lobby had enlisted a few other townspeople to help carry Liesel to a local convent, one that operated as a hospital for the refugees. She woke up three days later surrounded by nuns, all of who were chanting prayers around the bedsides of their patients.

            "And I thought I was in heaven, or hell," Liesel said with a dry laugh. "Until I heard the explosions. By then I knew that the landings had begun, and I missed all of the action."

            The nuns refused to let her leave while she was still bleeding, and Liesel couldn't have escaped even if she wanted to -- her body felt rotten, as if she had been dead and was resurrected by the nuns, who spoon-fed her broth and wiped the sweat from her eyes as she battled her body to stay alive. She learned that she had sepsis and a fever, had floated in and out of consciousness for days before the nuns were certain that she would live. One had sprinkled holy water over her body, another had prayed the rosary by her bedside nonstop for five hours. The nuns had refused to give up on her, even though her body was desperate to hurl her spirit into the void.

            "Two days ago, I walked for the first time in three weeks," Liesel said. She seemed amazed. "I wanted to come sooner, because I knew the Russian would seek you out. But my legs wouldn't work. So, they made me stay, go to mass with them in the morning, tend to the ones who were worse off than me. They put me in a wheelchair and never asked questions. They let me breathe and relax, let me become well again." She stopped and folded her hands together. "I wanted to be a nun once, you know. When I was a little girl. I thought they had a direct line to God." She stared into the flame of the lantern on Karolina's desk. "Perhaps they do."

* * *

 

            It was time to go. Karolina knew the moment had been coming ever since she left England in a rickety little boat, but now she had to face the facts: her presence was a threat to everyone – the men, her fellow officers, Liesel and Ella – and she had to leave so that they could live.

            She waited until things died down in the tent, until Liesel had been led away by Ella to find a bed, until Colonel Sink had finished his yelling and threatening and worn himself out, until Nixon had gone back to Winters’ tent to refresh his flask. When she was finally alone, she rose up slowly, opened her pack and began to roll up the maps she had so desperately consulted before she knew the whole truth.

            Her stomach was in knots, and she pressed her hand to her diaphragm, willing her body to calm down. She hadn’t taken a pill in hours, and then she thought again of the single little blue pill rolling around in Katya’s empty trunk, and she kicked the makeshift desk with the toe of her boot. _Verräter._

            Karolina didn’t know the location of her own trunk, and it would be impossible to go searching for it without disturbing anyone, so its contents would have to be left behind. That was fine – the most valuable items she possessed were always kept in her pack. She double checked the bag for her Pervitin, the paper with the Reich eagle emblazoned across the header, and the knife that Speirs had given her in Aldbourne. Her throat caught as she saw it gleam in the lamplight, but she swallowed hard and secured the buckles. _No time for that now._

            Everyone would think that she had deserted them, that she was the traitor. The idea of them hating her hurt more than she would like to admit. _It’s for their own good,_ she thought. Even if they wouldn’t know that, even if they did call her a Nazi bitch once she was gone, she took comfort in the fact that she could offer this one last act of protection. No one needed to be caught in the cross hairs over her. She wasn’t worth it.

            Karolina drew back the flap of the tent. Nothing stirred in the night, and she stepped out and bent down to retie her boots before she made her way east. She would go into Paris, then follow the road to Reims and Metz, cross the border near Saarbrucken and make her way up to Frankfurt. She could figure out the rest of her plan while she walked, but one thing was for certain – she would kill Droessler, Katya, and anyone else who meant her harm before they could get to her or the men in the Airborne.

            “What are you doing?”

            Karolina froze, and then closed her eyes slowly. “Going to my tent.”

            Nixon stepped out of the shadows and stood in front of her. She opened her eyes and put on the most innocent expression she could muster. His face was blank, but his narrowed gaze pierced her. “It doesn’t look like you’re going to your tent,” he said.

            Karolina’s stomach was roiling, and she pushed down the guilt that was rising in her chest. They stood there silently, waiting for the other to make a move or say something, and finally she gritted her teeth and moved to walk past him. Nixon sidestepped to the right and blocked her path.

            “What are you doing?” he said again, only this time there was an edge to his voice. She watched as he squared himself up in front of her, as if he could physically prevent her from passing him.  

            She sucked on her teeth before she looked him in the eye. “It is for the good of everyone,” she said, and he cocked his head. “If I go.”

            He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not following.”

            She shook her head and ducked to the left, but he grabbed her arm and whipped her back around to face him. “Let me go,” she said.

            “No,” he replied. "Lina, talk to me."

            She could feel the panic rising in her throat. She didn’t like to be yanked around, and he knew that. “Let. Me. Go.”

            “Absolutely not,” he said. “You’re staying here.”

            The veins in her neck were throbbing. “You don’t understand,” she said, trying to control her voice. “I need to go, to get away, so I can take care of everything.”

            Nixon raised his eyebrows, his face florid. “Oh really? So, the plan was… what, exactly? Use us to get over to France, trick us into thinking that you’re a part of our team, and then desert us?” He scoffed to himself. “You know, you are so smart, Karolina, until it comes down to considering that maybe some of us are just as smart as you.”

            She smiled tightly and stared up into the night sky. A thin film of grey covered the horizon, announcing the early hours of the morning. She held herself back from lashing out – that wouldn’t help now. Her throat felt like it was swollen, and she tried to swallow a few times before shaking her head.

            Nixon seemed to deflate a little as he watched her struggle. “Please, I’ve said this so many times,” he began. “You can talk to me, alright? Whatever is going on, whatever you think you need to do, you can talk to me about it. I know you – “

            “Do you?” she said quietly. He paused, and she turned to face him. He looked as if he wanted to argue, but he also looked defensive, as if he had something to prove by fighting her. “Do you really know me?”

            She raised her hands with a dry laugh and let them fall with a slap to her thighs. “You don’t know me,” she said, and then it all started coming to the surface, it was pouring over and she couldn't stop herself. “You don’t. You don’t know the things that I’ve done, what I did to people, what I _still_ do, you don’t --" She covered her eyes with her hands. This would all be easier to say if she couldn’t see his reaction, couldn't see him judge her. “You want to hear the story? I kill people, Lewis. I put people in camps. I _created_ those camps. I did it because I liked it, and I made sure that they suffered.” She lowered her hands and looked at his face. He appeared to be frozen, his hands hanging by his side. “I made SIS spies trust me, then I arrested them, and then I killed them, Lewis. I killed them inside my little traps. And I was so good at it, too. Oh, I was the best. Better than the boys, better than anyone else, _Karolina kann die Sterne vom Himmel schießen_...”

            “And I did it because it felt good, but also because I was dying.” She slapped her palm to her chest, and her hand shook. “Because there was nothing to live for anymore. Because I didn’t see a future for myself and I was so, _so_ _angry_ , angry at everyone who enjoyed life and I couldn't because...” Karolina’s knees felt weak, and she sank down onto the trampled, muddy grass. “And then I started recognizing the names on the list of ghetto residents, on the lists of those who were being sent to the camps that I helped to make, and I…”

            She paused, and Nixon didn’t move. She didn’t want to look at his face. “My brother and I tried to make a run for it. They killed him. You know that much.” The wetness of the mud was seeping into the knees of her pants. “They put me in prison, and every day I tried my best to die, to kill myself, but they wouldn't let me. They wanted me to suffer. Then the SIS got to me, offered me amnesty, told me that I could redeem myself by working for them, by killing the people who taught me how to kill in the first place.” She slung the pack from her back and yanked it open. She saw Nixon take a half-step in her direction, but he stopped when she held up a familiar piece of paper.

            “This is the only proof I have that I work for them,” she said. “You tried to read it, get it translated. It says that I was cooperating with the SIS at the time of my defection in prison. It’s my proof that they offered me protection for when the end comes, if the end ever comes.” She dropped the paper into her lap. “It is all I have. I know what they will do if they have the chance – they will use me and discard of me, disown me, send me to the hangman, blame it all on me.”

            She was so tired. She wondered if it would be easier to curl up on the ground and wish herself into nonexistence. Her entire body was shaking as if she had just run a mile. She looked up at Nixon, but his face was hard to see in the darkness. “I have to go,” she said quietly. “So they won’t kill all of you to get to me.”

            The silence of the night hung between them until Nixon cleared his throat. He shifted on his feet, and then turned away from her. “You’re staying here,” he said over his shoulder, his voice wiped of all emotion. “That’s final.”

            He walked off into the night, and Karolina sat in the grass until the sun began to emerge from the treetops. “I am so tired,” she said to the sky. " _Gott, ich bin müde_."

* * *

 

            Nixon’s mind was curiously blank. He lay in his cot for the remainder of the night and tried to process all that Karolina had told him. _I don’t believe her,_ one half of his brain said. The other half scoffed. _How can I not believe her?_

            Despite her nationality, despite his knowledge of her previous employment in the Abwehr, despite her ability to kill and fight her way out of any situation, Nixon had always thought of Karolina as someone who was Good. After all she had told him, he still thought of her as Good. She was his friend, and he was hers, even if she still liked to pretend that she didn’t have any friends. But his mind couldn’t seem to comprehend that she had _enjoyed_ working with the Nazis because, well, he had always assumed that working with Nazis was the worst thing that had happened to her. And it had been, so it seemed, but it was still shattering to hear her profess to enjoy torturing people. He blinked and counted his breaths, but it still wasn’t sinking it. _I’m in shock,_ he realized.

            Near dawn, his tent flap was pulled back, and Dick’s confused face appeared in the early morning light. “Care to tell me why Karolina is sitting in a field, staring at the ground?”

            “Oh, Jesus,” Nixon said, and rolled over onto his stomach. “Christ, you don’t want to know.”

            “Well now I do,” Dick said as he stepped into the tent. “Ran into Speirs on my way to talk to you. He was sitting off by himself, chain smoking. Looked grumpier than usual.”

            Nixon sat up at that. “Did he tell you what was wrong?”

            “Nope,” Winters replied. He sat down on the edge of Nixon’s cot. “Just kept staring straight ahead. Didn’t even say hello.”

            Nixon did not have the emotional energy to deal with two psychopathic breakdowns in one morning. “Karolina finally broke last night,” he said, and Winters raised his eyebrows. “She just let it all out, told me more than I wanted to know. She was going to sneak off in the night and go seek her revenge on Medvedeva and Company.”  

            “What?” Winters said. “Is she alright?”

            Nixon shook his head. “I don’t think she’s ever been alright. I don’t think she will ever _be_ alright.”

* * *

 

            For the first time in his life, Ron wished that he wasn’t so good at eavesdropping.

            He had heard it all – every sordid detail, the incriminating past, the way Karolina held onto a piece of paper to escape from her crimes – and if he could go back in time and walk away from her tent, not be so concerned about her well-being to loiter near her, he would. But he couldn’t, and now he sat by himself and chain smoked and tried to reckon with the fact that his first instincts about Karolina had been right all along.

            Nixon had left her there in the field, and so had Ron. She deserved it, and he flattened the feeling of concern that gnawed at his stomach when he didn’t see her come back from the clearing. For all he knew, she was still sitting out there, waiting for someone to come to her. _Not anymore,_ he told himself. _No more. No more._

At one point during Ron's reveries, Winters had walked past and said good morning, asked if there was something wrong, and Ron couldn’t pull his mind up to the surface to even give him a nod. He was too busy analyzing everything, trying to discover exactly how Karolina had weaseled her way into his head and feelings, how she could have manipulated him into helping her. He hit dead ends every time. There had to be a moment when she changed the dynamic between them. He wouldn’t accept a reality where he had let himself fall for a Nazi.

            Because that was what happened – he had fallen for her, and now it made him sick, it made him want to punch someone, it made him want to punch _her_ , like he had wanted to the first time he had met her. Even now he had to fight the urge to go seek her out, even if it was to throttle her. It seemed that whether he hated or loved her, his mind would always find a way for him to see Karolina. But that was over now. She could die in a ditch for all he cared – _and he cared, he couldn’t deny that he cared, oh God, why didn’t she tell him herself? There was a chance that they would have been fine if she had trusted him enough to tell him her secrets – but then, why would she have trusted him at all, the way he behaved towards her in the beginning? Christ, there was no way to resolve this in his mind, he would keep going in circles until he walked into that field and grabbed her and –_

            _No._ He dropped his cigarette on the ground next to the pile of butts and rubbed it out with the toe of his boot. He couldn’t think straight anymore, but in the back of his mind he knew he had responsibilities somewhere, so he walked into camp, looking for something to do. The morning was rising humid and misty, and he wiped the sweat off his brow. _No more._

            Ron decided that in his world, she no longer existed.

* * *

 

            Someone was standing in the opening of her tent. She turned her head towards the intruder, her eyes unfocused, lost in her mind.

            “Get your things together,” said Nixon. He was staring at the ground, refusing to look her in the face. Her heart dropped. “We’re being pulled off the front line. We’re heading back to the beaches.”

            She blinked. “What?”

            “We’ll be in a field camp north of Utah, on the coast,” he continued. “We’re going back to England.” He swallowed and glanced up at her. “There’s something else you should know.”

            She breathed in, and out. Nixon waited for her to say something, but she had said everything she had needed to say. She wondered if she would ever say so much again.

            “Tar will be there,” Nixon continued. “He wants to have a word with you.”

            “All of us?” Karolina asked.

            “No,” Nixon said, shaking his head. “Just you.” He stepped out of the tent and disappeared back into the camp.


	20. Cleansed

Chapter Twenty

Cleansed

_Utah Beach, Normandy_

_July 1944_

 

            Tar chose an abandoned garage for their meeting, one with a hole in the roof that still smelled of singed wood and an ominous dark splatter across the door that looked like old blood. Ella patted Karolina on the shoulder before she leaned against the dingy tin siding of the building and pulled out her canteen. “I will stay out here,” she said.

            Karolina cracked her neck and let her face relax, breathing deeply before pushing the cumbersome door open and walking into the shed. It was dark inside, but the hole in the roof allowed some light into the garage, which smelled of rust and wet earth.

            Tar sat on the edge of a crate that was covered with papers spilling out of manila folders and a banged-up typewriter, positioned directly under the accidental skylight. Though they were in Occupied France, he was dressed in his signature tartan-and-tweed ensemble and looked like he had just stepped out of the office. He was picking the dirt from under his fingernails with a pen knife and didn’t stop to greet Karolina when she stepped closer, but he did give her a cursory look-over. He grimaced and raised his eyebrows. “You look like hell.”

            Karolina tilted her head. “You look clean.” And he did – he always looked well-groomed and ready to meet the King of England, if His Majesty happened to wander across the dunes of Normandy. How did he do that? After five years, she still had not discovered his methods.

            Tar barked out a short, dry laugh and set down the pen knife. “The benefits of an office job,” he replied with a slight smile. He was being far too jovial. Karolina felt her muscles tense, and he raised his chin upwards as if he smelled her suspicion. “You’ve been very naughty, darling.”

            “I think I have been rather good, considering the circumstances,” she said. _Considering the fact that you dumped us into a rowboat and sent us off to slaughter an entire occupational force._

            Tar hopped off of the crate and walked towards her, tucking the pen knife into his tweed jacket. “You exposed yourself to German intelligence before the invasion. You nearly overdosed on the poison we so generously supply you with.” Only the tightness in the sides of his mouth betrayed how perturbed he truly was. “You threw yourself into harm’s way countless times over a company of men that have nothing to do with you. You allowed Medvedeva to escape, even covered for her as she went. And then you tried to slip away from us and run back to the Germans.” He twisted his mouth into a grin. “A busy month, wouldn’t you say?”

            She opened her mouth to counterattack, but Tar beat her to the point. “Oh, you couldn’t have known Katya had a reason to defect? Or it was your duty to protect others from stray bullets, or bombs, or what-have-you?” He blinked slowly. “If you can’t discover intelligence by yourself, without us guiding you, then you aren’t an asset – you’re a burden. A financial, political weak point for the entirety of the SIS.”

            Karolina stiffened. “I’m far too valuable in the field to be imprisoned.”

            Tar shrugged. “Doubtful,” he said. “But you know better, darling. You wouldn’t be placed in a cell. There would be a definitive, quick conclusion to your story.” He leaned against the crate and tucked his hands into his pockets. “And stories can be revised. Yours wouldn’t be difficult at all, no…” He spread his hands in front of him. “I can see it now – ‘ _Nazi Spy Executed, Aided the Reich in Killing Overseas Allied Agents’_.” He lowered his hands and dusted off the front of his jacket. “It would be so tidy for us. You’ve really helped us out, you know, making yourself easy to dispose. I suppose we ought to thank you for that, at least.”

            Karolina stood there, silent, as he cocked an eyebrow. “What, the silent treatment? I’m a little surprised, I figured you would want to argue –“

            _Punch him in the face. No, head-butt him in the face. No, take out that piece of paper and rip it in half, tell him you don’t work for him anymore, kill him and escape… or, threaten him with the Americans, they have all the power now, the British rely on them to win the war and you can convince Sink to speak with someone higher-up on your behalf, or…_

“I followed your orders,” she said. “I cleared the coastline. I attacked the cities. I have been gaining intelligence. You would be walking blind if it were not for me. Your incompetence let Katya escape. Your refusal to remove yourself from behind your desk, hiding in your tower like a frightened girl –“

            Tar closed the distance between them in two strides and wrapped his hand around her neck and slammed her against the metal siding of the shed. Her body reverberated against the wall with a loud _bang,_ and she reflexively grabbed hold of his wrist.

            “Please listen carefully,” Tar said, slightly winded. Karolina squirmed under the pressure on her windpipe but stared him down, focusing all of the hatred and frustration and pain and fury that she had felt for the last month into his eyes. “You are expendable. There are more of you than you know. You will do what we tell you, or we will find a way to get rid of you, either in the field or in the Tower with your friend Adolf.”

            Karolina kicked out towards his crotch with her knee but Tar dodged backwards. She saw the blur of his hand before he slapped her hard, hitting her ear and cheekbone. A dull buzzing filled her head, and she glared as she quit squirming and went limp, watching him struggle with her dead-weight.

            “Enough,” he said sternly, pulling away and letting her slump to the dirty concrete. “When you act like a child, you’re punished like one.” He patted his carefully-combed hair back into place. “This environment had regressed your progress. You used to be so calm.”

             She stared up at him from the ground. He would be so easy to kill. Her cheek stung and her ears were ringing and she could break him on her knee like a twig if he turned around, let his guard down for one minute…

            “You’re not to go to England with everyone else,” Tar said. He picked up a folder from his desk and held it out in front of him. “You’ll stay here, get cleaned up, eat something and get those bloody awful stitches out of your face. You’re going to infiltrate the interior of France.” When she didn’t rise up from the ground to take the papers from his hand, he let them drop onto the crate with a sigh. “Oh, please, you’re going to love this. We’re liberating Paris.”

***

            The first thing Nixon had done was to find a proper clean uniform, shed the foul one he had worn for a month, and line up to take a shower. Next, he made sure that Easy was properly squared away and let them loose toward the direction of their own shower lines, found Dick and inquired about the status of their billet, and gorged himself on a meal of stewed mystery meat, potatoes and gravy, and dinner rolls. Then he went to look for Karolina.

            What he found was Ella smoking demurely outside of a tawdry garage, ignoring the looks that the passing servicemen were giving her, twirling a weed she had plucked from the ground between her thumb and forefinger.

            “Hello,” he said. She nodded at him. “Don’t you want to go get cleaned up?”

            “Where would I do that?” she asked, flicking the ash from the end of her cigarette. “In the communal showers?”

            That was a good point – where would the women get clean? Nixon tilted his head. “I can clear out the showers before both of you get in, take turns making sure no one interrupts while you bathe.”

            Ella smiled serenely. “That is very generous.”

            “What’s that?”

            Ella held the plant up to the weak sunshine. “ _Taraxacum,_ ” she said, squinting. “ _Dente di leone._ Dandelion.”

            “It doesn’t look like one,” Nixon said. “Aren’t they supposed to have fuzz?”

            “He is young,” she replied with a shrug. “You can use the root to flush the liver, no?”

            “Sure,” Nixon said, out of his depth. He motioned to the garage. “What’s happening in there?”

            “Oh, Karolina and Tar are having a discussion,” Ella said. Something hit the interior wall and shook the flimsy structure, and Nixon flinched. Ella raised her eyebrows. “A physical discussion.”

            In an instant, Nixon was twelve years old again, watching his parents have an argument in the downstairs parlor from the stairwell, their shadows bouncing monstrously onto the wall as his mother throws crystal tumblers and his father wrestles her down onto the chaise lounge.

            “No,” Nixon said aloud, barely registering that the word had left his mouth before he seized onto the rope handle of the door and burst into the damp interior of the shed.

            Karolina and Tar were standing on opposite sides of the small building, glaring at each other, and when she turned to look at him, Nixon noticed her inflamed cheek. He narrowed his eyes at Tar, who seemed nonplussed by the interruption.

            “Can I help you?” the British man said, and Nixon found himself walking into the middle of the room, placing himself in front of Karolina. “This is a private discussion.”

            “It sounded a bit too rowdy in here,” Nixon said. He turned to look at Karolina, who was glaring daggers at Tar. “For a private discussion, that is.”

            The man smiled primly. “You must be Nixon,” he said, stacking the papers on his makeshift desk. “Wonderful. I had been curious about you, after all I’ve heard.”

            “Likewise,” Nixon said. Behind him, he could hear Karolina breathing heavily. Tar signed a paper with a flourish and held it out in front of him. When Karolina didn’t step forward, he let the paper flutter down to the concrete. He heaved a sigh and rolled his eyes at Nixon.

            “She’s to stay in France,” Tar explained. “But she pitched a fit when she was told she wasn’t going back to England, so I’m granting her a furlough of sorts. Two weeks.” He held up two fingers and raised his eyebrows, as if he were scolding a child. “All you get, and then you’re back over here on the next flight from Upottery.”

            Nixon bent down and picked up the form. “I’m being very generous, darling, especially after all of your misbehavior,” Tar said as he walked towards the door. “More instruction to follow, as always.” He looked Nixon up and down and raised an eyebrow. “Pleasure, I’m sure.”

            Nixon grimaced his semblance of a society smile, and Tar strode out into the melee of Utah Beach, letting the metal door slam behind him. He turned to look at Karolina, who was still sitting on the ground with her arms wrapped around her shins, her jaw clenched and a look of… _helplessness?_ … on her face. He had only seen that look once before, long ago in Aldbourne when the greatest threat were rogue spies sending her envelopes full of ash and trying to stab her in pubs. His first instinct was to bend down and gather her into his arms, but his brain jerked him away from that thought, a sixth sense emerging from his subconscious. _Too dangerous_ , it said, and he realized with a start that he was wary of her.

            “Are you okay?” he said, and he hated how simplistic it sounded. After the night before, they had already established that she had never been fine. But he had to know if her jaw had been broken or her windpipe crushed.

            Karolina blinked and glanced up at him, meeting his gaze with a frank, matter-of-fact look in her eye. “One day, I am going to kill that man,” she said firmly. “Before he can kill me.”

            For the first time, Nixon really believed her.

* * *

 

            They were to be billeted inside a dilapidated hotel that overlooked the once-peaceful wide beaches of the coastline. Their room had a small balcony, but the iron railing had come apart from the siding of the hotel and Karolina did not trust it enough to sit out and enjoy the sounds of tanks moving down the street and the whistles and catcalls of desperate men looking for female company.

            The officers of Easy, Dog, and Fox were also staying in the building and on the same floor as Ella and Karolina. Nixon and Winters had taken the room directly to their right, and Welsh and Buck Compton had moved their trunks into the room on the left. Karolina watched all of the men move into these spaces with a gimlet eye. There was always a reason for everything in the American army, and she noticed the concern that radiated from Winters when he asked if the two women would be comfortable in the room. _So, Nixon did talk._ But she had to admit the wisdom in divulging to Dick Winters – if anything, the man would make sure that she was safe and stable, and Karolina mentally added points to Nixon’s reputation. As for the other officers, their motives were less than wholesome. Buck Compton had winked at her as he passed, and she had walked into her room and slammed the door shut.

            Ella had walked into the room and refused to sit on or touch anything. “I am filthy,” she said. “I would like to bathe first, so come with me? We can kneecap any _pervertiti_ that try to take a look. And Nixon said he would help, so.”

            No matter that the room was already disgusting. Karolina had peeled back the cover on the bed and smelled the sheets before deciding that she would be sleeping on the floor. The wooden floorboards were stained with what looked like spilled liquor and piss, and the wallpaper was ripped and peeling away from the glue on the plaster. But she dug through her trunk – which had been searched repeatedly, she noticed with a grimace – and found what constituted as a clean uniform: a black men’s shirt she had stolen from her billet in Aldbourne and her spare set of black pants that she had taken from a dead man in Saarbrucken. She had squirreled away one spare brassiere, but that had been stolen from her trunk, probably by some syphilitic, degenerate lackey who was bitter about lugging equipment back and forth.

            “Let’s go,” she said, her spare clothes in hand, and Ella almost skipped out into the hallway in anticipation. The Italian banged on Nixon’s door with a fist, and after a few minutes of groaning, the door was opened an inch by a shirtless, tired-looking Nixon. “I was taking a nap,” he said in a gravelly voice.

            “Ooh la la,” Ella cooed, sticking her fingers through the crack in the door to poke at his chest. “ _Guarda quei muscoli!”_

Nixon slapped her fingers away. “Stop that. What do you want?”

            “You promised protection,” Ella said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Remember?” Nixon peeked his head out into the hall and raised an eyebrow at Karolina. She held up her spare change of dress with a shrug.

            “Oh, right,” he said, and he wiped his eyes. “Let me get decent.” He shut the door in Ella’s face.

She turned to look at Karolina with a wicked grin. “I didn’t know he was so _.._. ”

            “Stop salivating,” Karolina said dryly, but Ella only erupted into more giggles and slumped over onto the wall. “ _Oh mein Gott,_ enough! _”_

            A door opened next to them and out stepped Compton and Welsh, both double-fisting dark bottles. They stopped in the doorway when they noticed Karolina and Ella standing out in the hall. “Well, hello ladies,” Welsh said with a mischievous grin. “What are you all up to out here?”

            “Showering,” Ella said.

            “Sounds lovely,” Welsh replied politely, trying and failing to hide the amusement on his face. “Need any help?”

            “No,” Karolina said, staring him down. Welsh started snickering under his breath and Compton sent Karolina one of his lady killer grins, which did nothing to crack her facade. She rolled her eyes and turned her back to the men, who just laughed harder in response.

            Nixon opened the door to his room, this time fully dressed, and raised his eyebrow at the two officers. “Harry, are you drunk?”

            “Absolutely not!” Welsh said with a smile. “I would never, uh, do that.” Buck pressed his lips together to fight a smile and then broke, snickering down at the ground, and Harry soon followed with erratic giggles.

            “Okay, step aside,” Nixon said as he walked past them. Karolina and Ella followed him, and Ella stepped down hard on Welsh’s toes as she passed. She ignored his yelp and followed Nixon down the stairs and out of the lobby.

            The bathing situation was not luxurious. A wide, flat-roofed rubber tent had been erected hastily in front of the hotel, and though most of the men had departed, there were a few still waiting in line to get clean, and they ogled Karolina as she walked past. Nixon procured two towels for the women at the front of the line and shuffled them over into a little corner reserved for officers, which featured individual stalls and a little more privacy.

            “Alright, I’ll guard your clothes,” Nixon said, plucking the clean shirts and pants from the women. “The water is cold as hell and feels a little slimy, and it shuts off after ten minutes, so just try to scrub as fast as you can. You can use my soap.” He pulled a square tin container from his pocket and shook it. “Who’s going first?”

            “Let Ella,” Karolina said. “I think she has lice.”

            Ella flared her nostrils. “I do not,” she said, but she drew back the flap of the shower and stepped inside, letting it swish behind her. She quickly shed her boots and pushed them out from under the flap, layered her dirty clothes over the top of the curtain rod, and turned on the water. The little yelp told Karolina everything she needed to know about the comfort of the shower.

            Nixon tried his best not to stare at Karolina’s face. “What?” she asked.

            He motioned across his cheekbone and neck with his fingers. “You’re going to have a bruise,” he said. She quickly turned away and stared down the road, watching men unpack the wounded from truck beds and throw furniture out of windows. In the past, she would have made an off-color joke, would have laughed away his concern. Now she felt vulnerable in front of him, as if she could no longer fabricate a lie that would satisfy him now that he knew the truth. The urge to make a remark stayed on the tip of her tongue, but there were no words she could find that made her feel confident in herself, confident within the image of herself that she had sold to the men around her. _Because it’s all a lie. And now you have sabotaged yourself._

            “My father used to smack my mother around,” Nixon said quietly. That made her look at him – he was staring at the ground as he said it, as if he knew that she couldn’t meet his eyes. “It was all very hush-hush, you know, because he was this upstanding community leader and factory owner, and everybody just acted like it was my mother’s fault for making him hit her.”

            What did one say to that? A distant memory came to her, one of a nun smacking a little boy on the back of his legs with a plank of wood, the woman’s face aflame with satisfaction. She narrowed her eyes and nodded.

            “Anyway,” Nixon said, raising his head to look over her shoulder at nothing in particular. “I can’t stand to see women get pushed around. So, sorry if you thought I was trying to… protect you, or defend you. I know you can do that yourself. But the noises bothered me. I couldn’t stand outside and just listen.”

            She tilted her head. He really meant that, wasn’t just saying it for show. She furrowed her brow and reached out, tentatively, and patted his shoulder. Nixon stiffened, and she dropped her hand quickly back to her side. “Thank you,” she said, surprising herself.

            He gave her a tight smile and stepped away, clearly uncomfortable, and Karolina felt her stomach constrict. _Not quite forgiven yet._ But he had helped her when she was somewhat helpless, and that counted for something, right? _He was justifying his actions. It’s not because he cares about your well-being. He has personal issues. He doesn’t really care about you, not anymore._ The pressure in her stomach increased. They remained quiet until Ella had finished bathing.

            When it was her turn to shower, she handed her boots to Ella and stepped inside the shower stall, looking down at her bare feet, which were pale and pruned as if she had been wading through water. The mud under her toes felt wonderful in its goopy, mushy way. She braced herself and turned on the shower head.

            The water was icy, just as it had been in prison, and the soap was dirty and weak, but she scrubbed the filth away from her scalp and washed the grease from her face, being careful with the stitches on her forehead. She opened her eyes and looked at the crisscrossed scars that lined the inside of her arms, the circular burns made from cigarette butts on her upper arms and thighs, and the damaged tissue from the bullet that had gone through her calf in Munich as if seeing them for the first time. She had almost forgotten that they were there, but she had become so accustomed to dressing in army-regulation long-sleeves and pants that she had dismissed the worry of exposing her battered body to curious eyes. She ran her hands down her legs and imagined she could wipe away the memory of the pain, lift her hands from her body and reveal beautiful, unblemished skin like women had in advertisements. Wouldn’t that be nice. She would never be alluring like that, but she could dream.

            She squeezed the water from her too-long hair and cut off the shower before it ran out of water. Ella’s hand immediately shoved a towel through the flap and Karolina took it, scrubbing away the moisture on her body before wrapping her hair up in a turban.

            “Clothes?” she said, and underwear and uniform followed shortly after. She wrestled the dirty fabric of her old brassiere over her newly-cleaned skin, slipped into the men’s underwear that she wore under her pants, and began to feel like a human being again. She walked out of the shower barefoot, and Ella immediately laughed at the sight of the towel on her hand. Karolina sat down on the towel table and wiped the mud off of her toes before wiggling the old, crusty socks over her feet.

            Nixon glanced between the two women. “I had sort of forgotten what you two looked like,” he said. “Underneath all the dirt and blood.”

            “We are gorgeous,” Ella said with a nod, handing Karolina a boot. “We know.”

* * *

 

            The problem with trying to avoid someone, trying to pretend as if they didn’t exist, was that they seemed to turn up everywhere you went. Ron was learning this quickly.  

            He had seen Karolina emerge from a tumble-down shed with red marks on the side of her face and Nixon fuming right behind her. His first instinct was to stride over there and accost Nixon for daring to hurt her, but then his brain had retracted into a dark corner and his mind had gone blank. _No,_ he had said to himself, and turned on his heel and walked in the other direction.

            But still, he had wondered about it for the rest of the day. _Why had Nixon hit her? Why did she let him? What was going on?_

            “No,” he said aloud to himself in his billet, the old hotel room empty except for himself and his thoughts. No other officers from Dog had wanted to share a room with him. This was fine -- Ron preferred the solitude when he was in a dark mood. And while he was thinking about what to do next, he heard her voice floating past his door and making its way down the hallway, talking about showers and soap quality and cold water. He closed his eyes. _Of fucking course._

            So he had slipped out once he heard her door close and went on the hunt for anything that looked expensive and shiny, anything that made him feel rich, valuable. He returned with an armful of candlesticks robbed from some poor Frenchman’s beach-side retreat and threw the loot onto the unoccupied bed on the other side of the room. Someone knocked on the door, and he opened it to find Harry Welsh’s sneaky face peering in at him.

            “Hi, neighbor,” Welsh said, holding up a bottle of something dark and brown and swishing it. “Welcome to the block.”

            Ron had grimaced and let the man in. They drained the bottle, and three hours later Welsh passed out among the candlesticks, curling up against the pile and snoring loudly. Ron’s stomach was growling. He opened his door and stepped out into the hallway, walked down the corridor and turned the corner, and there was Karolina, pacing outside of an open door. He stood there long enough that she noticed him, turned her head to look at him and stared.

            _No. No, no, no. No._ He ran his tongue across his teeth and stared down at the carpet, not at her face, which he had registered as clean, and not at her hair, which was longer than it had been when they were in Aldbourne, so long that she now wore it in a braid over her shoulder. _Walk away, walk away._

            “What are you doing?” she said from down the hallway, and he looked at the folder in her hands and the weariness on her face, registered the fact that he wanted to walk up and touch the bruise on her cheek and then smothered the urge deep inside his chest. Instead, he shot her a cold glare, turned on his heel and walked in the opposite direction. He did not turn back to see her standing there, frozen in place, her face a careful mask to hide the panic in her eyes.

            He walked through the town without a destination, just to breathe the fresh air and bully a few Dog men who were out getting drunk. He might have threatened to shoot one of them for being intoxicated. He didn’t really remember.

            That night, after kicking Harry out of his room, he lay in his uncomfortable, dirty bed and tossed and turned, listening to the sound of her voice and a few other men floating down the hall. _What was she doing with them?_ When he did drift off, he had a dream where he chased Karolina across a smoking battlefield and shot her in the chest, and then fell to his knees and desperately tried to stop the bleeding, panicking as he watched her gasp for breath on the dirt as she clawed at the wound and looked up at him, utterly bewildered. He woke up in a cold sweat and ripped the sheets off of his bed, feeling trapped. He picked up all the candlesticks he had taken from that Frenchman’s house and threw them over the rail of his balcony, listening to them rattle and bounce in the street below.

* * *

 

              _So it’s going to be like that, then._ Karolina watched Ron walk away and tried to ignore the bitterness that rose up in her throat. He had heard, somehow; he had been told, rumor was probably spreading, and now she felt a cold sweat forming under her arms and behind her kneecaps. _Who else knew? Who else hated her?_

            She had been deciphering the complicated Intel regarding the invasion of Paris, which did not resemble an invasion as much as a slapdash collection of Maquis movements that were reaching their boiling point under German occupation. Allied intelligence was trying to gauge exactly when that angry crowd of French citizens and refugees – and young men and women who were mostly children -- would explode, and how to harness their rage into something proactive that could be weaponized. Essentially, it was the same plot and plan as Operation Overlord, which Karolina found ridiculous. It had worked once because the Germans had been surprised by the uprising of the average citizen against their bulletproof regime. Karolina doubted they would be deceived in the same way again. But maybe, just maybe, the Nazis were getting sloppy.

            She had combed through the contents of the folder looking for structure, some sort of plan, before realizing that _she_ was to make the plans, and this frustrated her so much that she repeatedly slammed the folder against the dilapidated wardrobe and paced in the hallway to work off her nerves. _Of course_ the SIS would both threaten to execute her and ask her to win Paris in one breath. She laughed bitterly under her breath and shook her head. And then she had noticed Ron at the end of the corridor.

            After he left, Karolina stood there silently for a moment before she leaned up against the wall and slid down onto the wood floorboards. She never had friends, not really, and she had never set out with the intent to make friends among the men, but somehow she had gotten people to like her. And those people now saw her clearly, and she had no one to blame but herself.

            She needed a drink. The urge surprised her, but she felt the desire to turn to something that would dull her reality, dull the sting of not being wanted. She looked down the hallway towards Welsh’s room and rose up to her feet. She walked past her room and knocked on the battered wooden door, feeling foolish. _The old Karolina wouldn’t do this._ But clearly, the old Karolina was gone.

            Buck Compton answered the door. “Oh,” he said. He ran a hand over his short-cropped hair nervously.

            “Where’s Welsh?”

            He raised his eyebrows and looked up at the ceiling. “Don’t know,” he said. “Disappeared a while ago, hasn’t come back. But maybe I can help you with something?”

            Karolina sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I need alcohol,” she said.

            Buck smiled. “I have that.” He opened the door wider and nodded to the side. “Want to come in?”

            Their room was a mess. Trunks had upchucked their contents onto the floor and over the beds, empty liquor bottles were stacked neatly next to the one bedside table and the lamp had a blue scarf draped over it, casting everything in a melancholy light. Buck hastily grabbed at spare pieces of clothing and threw them into an open trunk, clearing off a space for her to sit on one of the beds. She lowered herself down slowly.

            Buck walked over to the dresser and brought out a stolen wine glass, popped open a bottle and poured her a drink. He handed it over to her with a smile.

            Karolina sniffed it and winced, took a tentative sip and winced harder. “What is this?” she asked. “Whiskey?”

            “Sherry,” Buck replied.

            “I hate it,” she said, taking another sip.

            Once he got talking, Buck Compton wasn’t so bad. Once he got over his ridiculous put-ons and suave answers, he was a normal, simple man. He liked football, which was not football but soccer, apparently. He had a girlfriend back in California that he swooned over, even though he was very flirty with the women here. He was extremely talkative, and Karolina encouraged him to blather on while she quietly robbed him of his liquor. Once she got used to the taste, the sherry was actually pleasant – it filled her with a warmth that made her feel cozy, as if she were wrapped in a large woolen blanket.

            It occurred to her that it was not appropriate to be in a strange man’s room alone. It was also not appropriate to drink privately with officers. Karolina swirled the liquid around in her glass and thought of all the rules she had broken. Of course, it was also a question of safety – women had no business drinking in a room with a man they didn’t know. Her head and neck felt hot and she eyed Buck suspiciously.

            “What?” he said with a laugh.

            “Who do you think would win in a fight?” she asked. “Me, or you?” It wasn’t what she had meant to say, but she was curious.

            He narrowed his eyes and leaned forward on his elbows. “That depends,” he said. “’Cause I’ve heard you’re one hell of a fighter.”

            “Correct,” she said.  

            “Heard you brought Speirs down,” Buck said carefully. She smirked at him. “He’s your friend now, right?”

            “We’re not friends,” she said, and her voice only sounded slightly bitter to her ears.  

            “He’s not my friend, either,” Buck said, quickly taking her side. “He’s a little intense, if you know what I mean.”

            _So am I._ She stared at him over the rim of her glass, and watched his throat when he swallowed. “I do,” she said. She let the silence settle between them, but looked up when Buck opened his mouth and shut it quickly. “What?”

            “Can I ask you a question?” he said. She shrugged. “I’ve just heard so many rumors, I don’t know what’s true and what’s false.”

            “Nothing is entirely true,” she said.

            He leaned forward again. “You were in prison?”

             She nodded. “Yes.”

            He tilted his head. “Wow, I mean, people told me, but… you’re just so…” He waved a hand in the air. “Enigmatic.”

            “E-nig-mat-tic,” she said lazily. “What does that mean?”

            “Mysterious,” he said, and then frowned when she started to chuckle. “I’m being serious.”

            “I do not think so,” Karolina replied. “I am just a person.” That felt nice. To be a person. To be someone, not a tool to use. She smiled softly. “But no one looks at me that way.”

            “I do,” Buck said.

            “You do not.” She rolled her eyes. “You just told me I was a mystery. I am not. I am twenty-four. I am a woman. I am German.”

            “Exactly!” Buck said. “That’s not normal around here, so, yes, you are mysterious.”

            “I went to prison because I tried to escape with my brother, who my adoptive father-employer killed, and I escaped from prison after trying to hang myself by poisoning thirteen guards and running through the Black Forest to France.”

            Even as she said it, it still didn’t seem real. But it had happened. She had picked briers out of the soles of her feet, had gotten sores from the poison ivy she brushed past. Buck was staring at her now, and she shifted her gaze towards him. She had never told anyone that. Yes, a handful of people knew that she had been imprisoned, and yes, it was common gossip, but no one knew the truth. The liquor was making her tongue loose. _Stop talking right now._

            “You can trust me,” Buck said, desperate for details.

            But she didn’t want to tell _him_ , she wanted to tell someone else, someone who would understand her blood lust and not be disgusted, someone who clearly had no interest in her anymore. The sherry turned over in her stomach and she lurched to her feet, already regretting her overindulgence. Buck jumped up and offered her a steadying hand, but she grabbed onto the armoire in the corner. It was identical to the one in her room and she found that amusing for some reason. “Not today,” she said as she walked towards the door. She needed to go have a lie down.

            Buck was protesting as she went, but she didn’t care. She needed to go back to her room and figure out how to start a coup in Paris. She wanted to curl up on her disgusting bed and sleep forever. She wanted to pound on Nixon’s door and demand that he tell her that he forgave her for being such a bad person, that he still wanted to help her when she was bleeding out in a foxhole. She opened the door and walked out into the hallway and ran directly into Welsh.

            “Oof,” Welsh wheezed, and she steadied him before he could fall over. By the look on his face, he was in a bad way, too. He caught her arms and gave her an once-over.  

            “Hey, pretty lady,” he said with a grin. “You clean up _good_.” He glanced at Buck, who was hovering behind her, and frowned. “Hey, what’re you doing with him? Without _me_?”

            “Drinking,” she said, the words melting out of her mouth. “Where were you?”

            “Knocked out in Speirs’s room,” he said, pointing down the hallway with his thumb. Karolina’s throat went dry. “He came back and kicked me out. Horrible mood.”

            She wiggled out of Welsh’s arms and walked into her room without a word, shutting the door behind her. “Hey!” Harry said, knocking on the other side, but she turned the lock and closed her eyes. _Do not walk down the hallway and go to his room. Do NOT leave your billet. DO NOT._

“Harry, for fucks sake!” Nixon hollered, opening his door. “Cut that noise out, we’re trying to sleep!” The men began to argue out in the hallway, and Karolina walked over to her bed and sat down slowly. Ella’s bed was empty – she had traipsed out hours ago with a silly grin on her face, no doubt meeting up clandestinely with Guarnere. Karolina listened to the men argue outside her room for a few minutes before she dragged the file folder towards her and opened the cover, leaned forward, and fell asleep with her face pressed against the papers.

            That night, she dreamed of the Blitz. She was back in the dank, dark London underground, packed into the tube station nearest to her apartment, only this time someone was holding her, making sure she was safe, telling her that everything would be okay. She woke up in the night to discover that she had wrapped her arms around herself.


	21. Lacrimae Rerum

Chapter Twenty-One

Lacrimae Rerum

_Aldbourne, England_

_July 1944_

 

            Karolina had two weeks, and she was determined to live as much life as she possibly could during that time, because the more she poured over the papers regarding the liberation of Paris, the more she realized that her odds were stacked. She probably wouldn’t be coming back from this.

            She had thought the same when SIS had informed her of the invasion of Normandy, but something about the Paris plans – of which there were none, really, just a blind trust in Karolina’s ability to figure it out as she went along – raised her hackles. There were no listed contacts to meet with when she arrived in the city. There was no planned hour or day in which the coup was to begin. ‘Gauge the level of discord and act accordingly’, Tar had written in the margins of the overview sheet clipped to the inside of the folder. It felt like a set-up. It felt like someone in the SIS was washing their hands of her.

            There was no reason to share her fears with anyone. Ella hadn’t been invited to partake in this assignment and had reacted poorly to not being able to tag along, but at the same time she hadn’t seemed too despondent – Karolina had pretended not to notice the amount of time she was spending away from their room and in the company of Bill Guarnere. In the past, she would have told Nixon, but now there was a silent iciness between them that Karolina couldn’t seem to break down, and the rest of the men didn’t need to know sensitive Allied intelligence. Solitude reared its ugly head once more, except this time there was sinister note to it, punctuated by her inability to share her worries.  

            So, the morning that the men and the two spies loaded up on a C-47 for a quick trip across the Channel to England, Karolina went on the hunt for Richard Winters. She had packed her trunk and dragged it down the stairs to the luggage pile that would be later shipped across the water, and she wiped her hands on her pants as she surveyed the crowd of men in the street in front of her. No tall redhead to be seen. She turned on her heel and walked east towards the bombed-out café that served as the Officer’s HQ.

            The doors and windows of the building had long disappeared and now resembled an open bar of sorts, one that was occupied by men lounging against the stone steps and packing papers into boxes. She peered into the dim interior and saw Winters in the back corner, holed-up with Welsh, Buck, Nixon, a replacement from Fox Company, and, of course, Speirs. Karolina stopped with one boot on the first step, immediately locked eyes with Ron, and turned directly around and began to walk back to the hotel.

            She didn’t get very far.

            “Hey!” Nixon’s voice called behind her, and she quickened her pace. “Alright, slow down.”

            She didn’t stop until he jogged after her and touched her shoulder softly, and she turned to face him. He looked annoyed and concerned, and she reflexively stepped away from him, as if the distance would lessen his discomfort. He grimaced but didn’t close the gap between them. “What are you up to?”

            Karolina stared over his shoulder at a crumbling church. “I wanted to brief Winters on an important matter,” she said.

            Nixon raised his eyebrows. “Does it have to do with Paris?”

            “Keep your voice down.”

            He rolled his eyes and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You didn’t feel like telling me?”

            She hesitated. “I…” _Didn’t think you would care? Or, didn’t think you would want to hear, after everything I’ve told you so far?_

“Forget it,” he said, his mouth a tight line. Karolina’s stomach sank – what had she done now? “Come on, I’ll go get him. You can talk in the café, away from the others.” He turned his back to her and quickly walked away. She followed him at a distance.

            Buck smiled at her when she reappeared in the café and intercepted her before she could reach the other officers. “Looking for me?”

            She snorted. What a ridiculous man. “No, I am not,” she said, and Welsh snickered behind him.

            Buck slapped a palm to his chest. “You wound me,” he said with a grimace.

            Karolina walked around him and stared directly at Winters, ignoring the predatorial look Speirs was giving her. “Lieutenant Winters? May I have a word?”

            He had the grace to hide his surprise. “Of course.” Winters handed a rolled up map over to Nixon with a significant look, and motioned behind him towards the back alley of the café. Karolina stepped ahead and passed Ron, feeling his glare on the back of her neck and trying her best not to betray her urge to turn around and sock him in the eye. That could wait until later.

            Winters closed the door behind them and leaned up against the wall, taking the weight off of his injured foot. Karolina fished a cigarette from her sleeve and motioned towards his bandage. “How is that doing?”

            Winter shrugged and looked down at his leg. “It’s a pain in the neck, but it’s fine.” His gaze travelled up to her forehead. “I see the stitches are gone.”

            “I took them out,” she said, lighting the cigarette. “They were itching.”

            “If Roe hears that, he’s going to blow a gasket,” Winters said with a knowing smile, and Karolina shrugged in response. “So, what’s up?”

            She crossed her arms and stared up at the blue sky as she exhaled. “I do not think I am coming back to the company after Paris. This is not because I am running away.” She narrowed her eyes as Winters looked away guiltily. “Despite what Nixon tells you, I am no coward. I do _not_ run away.”

            “He, uh, explained the situation,” Winters said, his neck going red.

            “Regardless,” she continued. “This task has been given to me because the SIS does not want me anymore. When I leave England, I do not expect to return.”

            Now he was concerned. “Are you telling me that they’re specifically sending you to Paris to be killed?”

            She nodded slowly. “To be killed purposefully, or to be killed because the task seems impossible.” She took a drag from her cigarette. “I have not decided what the true purpose is behind this mission. But it is too difficult for one person to complete successfully, even too difficult for me.”

            The silence hung between them for a moment before Winters stepped closer to her. “Then you shouldn’t be going, that’s not right, that’s _cruel_.”

            Karolina smiled a full smile, teeth and all, and Winters straightened up. _Oh, these sweet Americans._ “The British do not care about morality like you do,” she said. “They love to do things neatly, and this is a very neat way to dispose of me. I am a weak point for them. Do you think when the war ends that they will admit that a German helped them win?”

            Winters was blinking rapidly, absorbing all of this. “The point is that you need to make plans, if I do not return,” she continued. “You must destroy all of my belongings. You need to let Ella go and not try to stop her. She is more dangerous than she seems, and the British will want her disposed of as well. I want her to be protected.”

            He swallowed dryly. “We can do that,” he said, nodding to himself. “But how will we know…”

            “If I am alive, I will find you,” Karolina replied, flicking the ash from her cigarette. “I found you before, and I can do it again.” Winters smiled softly at that. “But if not, if it has been months since you have heard from me, destroy everything.”

            Winters looked like he had plenty to say about that, but after a few seconds of struggle, he simply extended his hand out towards her. Karolina let out a breath and grabbed his palm firmly. He grimaced but nodded. “I can do that.”

            She squeezed his hand. “Thank you, sir.”

* * *

 

            As soon as the trucks took them from Uppottery and dropped them back into Aldbourne, Karolina spent her spare time walking around the countryside, sitting in little meadows with a blanket and any book she could get her hands on, laying in the sparse sunshine and trying very hard not to think about death.

            She picked up her official uniform from the laundress on the corner -- who at first refused to serve her, called her a Kraut and spit at her feet -- and brought along extra money as a tip. The woman was a little more gracious after Karolina handed her the shillings.

She went to visit the horse she had met on her runs, and the farmer who owned the stables saw her leaning against the pasture fence, he let her into the paddock with an armful of hay and a curry comb, and she spent a nice hour chatting with him and listening to his stories of Ypres and the Somme and the good German boys who carried his stretcher when he was hit in the legs. She kissed the horse on the nose before she left.

            She spent time with the men, sitting with them during meals and asking them about their friends and families and their favorite things to eat, their first kisses and how they would treat the replacements when the first shipment of new men arrived.

            “Can’t trust any of them unless they were at Toccoa,” Bill said one day over peas and meatloaf. “Excepting you of course, doll.”

            On the fourth day, she went and found Nixon. He had commandeered what had been their little office in the stables and had set up shop, reclaiming all of his paperwork and maps and plastering them on the walls. She knocked on the door one afternoon, when he had his head down and was reading over a thick pile of memos. He looked surprised, and she tried not to let that hurt her.

            “Hi,” he said, pushing aside the papers.

            She leaned against the door frame. Bumblebees were whizzing through the camellia bushes behind her, and the sun was warm on her back. She tried to memorize that feeling for later, when things wouldn’t be so pleasant. “Do you hate me?”

            Nixon sighed and pushed his chair away from his desk. “No, I do not hate you,” he said bitterly. She raised her eyebrows, and he shook his head. “I don’t hate you,” he said again, a little more gently this time. “You just… really frustrate me, alright?”

            She folded her arms across her chest. She wasn’t very good at apologies, but she didn’t have many more opportunities to make things right. “I do not hate you, and I am sorry that I told you all of those things and made you uncomfortable, and I am sorry that I make you uncomfortable now, but I wanted to tell you that I am going to miss you, probably, when I go, and I like you very much and you have been kind to me, and --”

            He had gotten up from his chair when she had started speaking, but then walked towards her and grasped her shoulders. He was hugging her now. “Shut up,” he said, so she stopped talking and very carefully rested her hands on his back. “Stop talking like you’re not coming back. You always do that. I hate it.”

            “Okay,” she said, and he held her tighter. “Thank you for not hating _me_.”

            “I said, shut up,” he replied, and this time, she did.

* * *

 

            Ron was back where he began, back to square one: he was in Aldbourne, preparing for war, again, and he was suspicious of Karolina but still intent on following her wherever she went, again. But this time, he was filled with a jealous rage that he could name, identify, and assign to a definite source: he didn’t like the way Buck and Lewis were looking at Karolina lately.

            Forget the fact that he shouldn’t care about how anyone felt about her if he disliked her so much. That wasn’t the point – the point was that he recognized his own past feelings, his own thoughts, and his own motives in the way the other two men behaved around her. And that drove him crazy.

            He had been walking down the street when he saw Karolina and Nixon standing next to the stone wall outside of their slapdash office space. He ignored them until out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nixon drape his arm around her shoulder and pull her towards him. Ron waited for her to shrug Nixon off, to step aside. Instead, she leaned in, wrapped an arm around his waist, and knocked him sideways with her hip.

            His pulse throbbed in his neck as he watched Nixon poke her in the side, watched her try to squirm away through the laughter, and she was truly laughing, louder and freer than he had ever heard. Ron had never made her laugh like that.

            And then there was Buck Compton. Compton had clearly started a campaign to win Karolina’s approval through sheer physical closeness – at meals, he always tried to sit right next to her and engage her in conversation, and during PT exercises, he ran right beside her, keeping up a constant stream of whispers in her ear that made her shake her head in disapproval. The Karolina he knew would have scowled and ignored the man, but now she just rolled her eyes and allowed him to prattle like an idiot schoolgirl, even smiling a little now and then. Something was changing. Something had to be going on.

            And that’s how Ron found himself standing in Nixon’s doorway once again, except this time he had a few questions for the man himself. Nixon was working on a map of the new Normandy coastline when Ron made it to his front step, and the Nixon looked up at him with an incredulous, somewhat dismissive expression.

            “Well,” he said. “It’s been awhile. Can I help you with something?”

            Ron studied him. He was still drinking based on the circles under his eyes and the paleness under his beard. He seemed to be thinking of something else, something that was bothering him, and his eyes were distant, almost melancholy.

            “What’s going on?”

            In the past, Nixon would have sighed and humored him and divulged the pertinent information he wanted. But Ron was met with a stony expression and a look of strong dislike. “What do you mean?”

            “Karolina,” Ron said.

            Nixon raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you hate her?” he asked petulantly. Ron stared at him, gave him the crazy eyes that normally reduced other soldiers to a babbling mess, but Nixon turned away and went back to his maps. “Leave her alone, Ron.”

            “She likes you,” Ron said. “She talks to you.”

            “Not really, no,” Nixon replied.

            “I saw you two together,” he said, unable to keep the distaste from his voice. “You’re obviously close now.”

            Nixon cocked his head. “Ah. There it is.” He dropped his pencil to the desk and it clattered on the smooth wooden surface. “Is this when you threaten to eviscerate me?”

            “Yes,” Ron said.

            Nixon rolled his eyes. “You know, with the amount of lurking you do around here, I would have thought that you’d picked up on patterns of basic human behavior, but I suppose not.” When Ron didn’t reply, Nixon leaned back in his chair. “She’s getting ready for another mission, Ron. I think she’s trying to soak up as much happiness as she can before she leaves.”

            Ron stiffened. So she was leaving again. He had sensed that something was happening between her and Nixon after her outburst, but he had been too stubborn and spiteful to investigate. Ron wanted to ask where she was going, what she was going to be doing, who she was going to be doing it with, but Nixon had clearly reached the end of his rope. The man stood up and grabbed his cap from the table.

            “Ask her yourself,” he said, reading Ron’s mind. “We’re going out tonight, we’ll be at the pub.” He paused and looked Ron in the eye. “And this time, you’d better tell her what you’re really feeling. You may not get another chance.” Nixon’s face grew stormy then, and he walked off into the afternoon sunshine, leaving Ron standing in the doorway.

* * *

 

            “ _On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rosecolored hotel…”_ Ella paused, frowning. “Def-eren-ti-al palms cool its flushed…” She dropped the book onto the blanket. “This is too difficult!”

            Karolina folded her arms behind her head and kept her eyes closed. “Keep trying,” she encouraged. “The word is ‘def-fer-ren-tial’.”

            “What does that mean?”

            “Polite, submissive,” Karolina replied. “Things you are not.” She had rolled up the legs of her pants and the bottom of her shirt to feel the sun on her skin. They were sunning themselves in the old cow pasture that had been used as a training ground before they had been sent to Normandy. Now little pink and yellow flowers were blooming near the barbed wire fences, and birds had moved into the trees, filling the air with their high-pitched calls.

            “How can a plant be obedient?” Ella huffed. “ _Non ha senso.”_

“Keep going,” she said. “Or, if you do not want to read, tell me what is going on with you and Guarnere.”

            Ella threw the book into the grass and flopped down beside her. “I like him,” she said, her voice a content hum in Karolina’s ear. “I first I thought he was annoying, because he kept trying to flirt with me, but then we started fighting and I enjoyed that.”

            She was going to miss Ella so much. “That is weird,” Karolina said.

            “No it’s not!” Ella replied. “You and Speirs are weird.”

            “No, we are not,” Karolina said, opening one eye. “We are not anything.”

            “That is why it’s weird! You like him and he likes you but you hate him and he hates you and it does not make sense, you should kiss him.”

            “Okay, get off of my blanket,” Karolina said, pushing Ella into the high grass.

            “Excuse me, this is my blanket!”

            “Not anymore,” Karolina said. “It’s my blanket now.” Ella tried to climb back on, but Karolina kicked her in the rear, and the girl toppled over with a huff.

            “How German of you,” Ella said, and then threw a handful of grass on Karolina’s face, and then Karolina threw back her own handful of grass, and then they were rolling around, pinching each other and battling for command of the blanket, squealing and laughing and screeching and Karolina was laughing harder than she had in years.

            “ _Tregua!”_ Ella said, holding up her hands.

            “ _Nein,”_ Karolina replied, sitting on top of Ella’s back and bouncing slightly. “ _Noch nie_!”

            “Fine, you win,” Ella gasped, and Karolina fell off of her and onto the blanket, which was now covered in blades of grass, and Karolina thought about her Walt Whitman and whether or not Winters had found it in his trunk, and she wondered if he would burn that, too, when she never came back, and the sunny mood that had infected her was gone in an instant.

            “What’s wrong?” Ella said, picking grass out of her hair. “Is it Paris?”

            Karolina crossed her legs and played with the frayed edge of her sock. “Yes, but no,” she said. “It will be hard, being alone again.” A lie, but only a small one.

            “We will miss you,” Ella said, and that _we_ hit her harder than anything, because there were going to be multiple people noticing her absence in Aldbourne when she left, people she also liked very much and wanted to be safe. Karolina leaned back her head and closed her eyes – she didn’t believe in God, but she believed in something, and she asked it to keep the people here safe while she was gone. When she was gone forever.

            “I will miss you, too,” she replied, and Ella rubbed her shoulder.

* * *

 

            That night, they went to the pub for the last time. Karolina’s two weeks were up – she had one more full day, and then come Saturday morning at 0400 she was due on a Jeep to Uppottery. Ella was determined to fix up Karolina’s hair into something beautiful, so she sat for thirty minutes without moving while Ella yanked and rolled her unruly, fizzy mane into victory curls.

            “Going to make everyone jealous,” she mumbled under her breath while she operated on Karolina’s head. “More jealous than they already are.”

            “Is that a good thing?” Karolina had asked, but Ella shushed her and continued her work.

            An hour later, she had painted her red lipstick onto Karolina’s lips and stood back to survey her work. “Not bad,” Ella said to herself. “Bill did say that they all liked the red lipstick, so…”

            “Excuse me,” Karolina began, but Ella shook her head and zipped up the back of Karolina’s dress and led her by the arm down the road.

            Karolina was having the strangest sense of déjà vu. “I hope no one gets stabbed tonight,” she said offhandedly, and Ella erupted into a fit of laughter, and soon Karolina joined in. She was feeling lighter, more buoyant than she had in a long time, and she wanted to laugh more, to dance, to drink and enjoy the banter and pretend that for once, she was a normal person and allowed to do those things. The girls synced their steps and clicked down the road to the pub, ignoring the catcalls of the men who passed by in trucks and the glares of the local women who were also on their way for a drink and a dance.

            Inside, it was crowded and smoky as always, packed to the brim full of men and a handful of local women doing their best to fend off multiple offers of drinks all at once. Bill Guarnere perked up his head when Ella and Karolina entered and weaved his way through the crowd towards them. He slipped his arm around Ella’s waist, and she slapped his hand away.

            “Ouch! Evening, ladies,” he said, rubbing his skin. “Don’t you look stunning?”

            Ella simpered, and Karolina grimaced.

            “Everyone’s been asking about you,” Bill said, parting the crowd for them and elbowing a few ignorant soldiers out of the way. “They wanna celebrate your send-off properly. We didn’t get to do it last time, ya know.”

            “I remember,” Karolina said.

            The men of Easy had commandeered the middle of the pub, squeezing tables together until they were all bunched up together, and they cheered and whistled when Karolina and Ella made it into their inner circle. Malarkey stood up and offered Karolina his chair, and she took it with a smile.

            “What’re ya drinking?” Johnny Martin asked as he leaned across the table.

            “We’re doing shots!” Luz announced, and Karolina groaned as he slid down glasses of whiskey onto the table, splashing the liquor everywhere. “Oh c’mon, Karolina, you can do a shot.”

            “Just because I can does not mean that I want to,” Karolina said as Skip slid a shot towards her.

            “Cheers, doll,” Bill said, clinking his glass against hers. “It’s go down easier if you just do it quick.”

            “ _Prost,_ ” Karolina said with a grimace, and then she reared back and took the shot. It was awful, but the men cheered her on and Ella cackled beside her and after she set the glass down, she smiled and shook her head. She scanned the room and spied the officers hiding away in the back at the same table they had taken before the Invasion. Winters was sipping his soda, Nixon was deep in conversation with Welch, and Buck was staring directly at her. When she met his eye, he winked. She turned around quickly, and she could have sworn that she heard him laughing from across the room.

            Ella wiggled her eyebrows. “I saw that,” she said, taking a sip from the beer that Guarnere had brought them. She smiled as she sipped. “He is coming this way.” Karolina glared at her and Ella choked on her beer.

            “Doesn’t this look cozy?” Buck’s voice echoed behind her, and Karolina turned and looked up at him. He quirked up an eyebrow and placed his hand on the back of her chair. “Think you’re up for a dance?”

            “Yes!” Ella said before Karolina could open her mouth. “She’s dying to dance.”

            Karolina could have slapped her, but Buck was already dragging her chair backwards. “Hey!” she protested, but he grabbed her hand and lifted her out of her seat, looking pretty proud of himself as he led her towards the dance floor. Wolf whistles and groans echoed behind them as the men watched them go. “It’s always the _officers…_ ” Malarkey whined.

            Buck swung her around and caught her with a strong hand to her mid-back. “I promise no funny business,” he said seriously, but there was a spark in his eye that Karolina didn’t entirely trust, but she realized that he was a skilled dancer after a few turns, and she felt herself relaxing and she gave him a little nod. He did have a girl back home, after all. She was safe.  

            “You dance fairly well,” she said, and he scoffed.

            “’Fairly well’? I’m a prodigy, honey,” he said. “Won UCLA’s swing dance competition two years in a row. We could give it a try?”

            Swing dancing. Now, that took her back. “I used to go to the wild clubs in Berlin, in secret,” she said. _Why are you telling him this?_ “Sneaked out a night, went to the jazz places when they were forbidden. I was a good dancer myself.”

            Buck drew her an inch closer. “Really? I never would’ve guessed.” He twirled her, and the dress Ella had lent her fanned out prettily. Buck tightened his grip on her when she returned to his arms. “Wish I could have seen that. I’d love to take you out dancing.”

            She raised an eyebrow. “Where? California? Or Berlin?” He laughed loudly and the neighboring couples turned to stare at them, and Karolina flushed, but she had to admit it was nice to envied, to be wanted. It was so foreign.

            “Wherever you want,” he said, but then he sobered up a little. “Oh, Christ.”

            “What?”

            He gritted his teeth and glared over her shoulder. “Nothing, let’s keep dancing,” he said, but she turned to look at what he was so angry about, and there stood Speirs on the edge of the dance floor, sending Buck a look that insinuated a very painful death if he ever got his hands on him. Ella smiled defiantly and stood up from her chair, placed a hand on Speirs’ arm and whispered something in his ear. The man went dark red and clenched his fist.

            “Ignore him,” Buck said, swallowing. “Keep dancing. Don’t let him spoil it.”

            Karolina found herself agreeing. “He is going to kill you,” she said conversationally. Buck rolled his eyes and pulled her in until she was flush against his chest and then dipped her quickly. Karolina leaned her head backwards and sent every ounce of _I-am-going-to-skin-you-alive_ energy towards Ella, who just crossed her legs and smiled smugly.

            Buck pulled her up and she saw that his expression had changed – far from being upset, he now looked devilish. “I don’t like the way he looks at you, like he owns you,” he said. “You can do whatever you want.”

 _No, I can’t._ She didn’t say it aloud. “He has a temper. If he is mad, it’s because of you.”

“You know what will really make him mad at me?” he whispered in her ear.

            Karolina leaned back and gave him a look of warning. Her heart was beating in her throat. “Don’t you dare—“ But Buck didn’t listen – she already saw his eyes on her lips, and she leaned away. He shot one last defiant look at Speirs, cradled her face in his hands, and kissed her fully on the lips.

            Her mind went blank as she processed that his face was touching her face and that it wasn’t unpleasant, but it made her freeze in place. “Holy shit!” someone said – Skip? Luz? – and then she found her arms and pushed Buck backwards, breaking away from him. She stood there for a second and looked at the red lipstick on his mouth -- which he touched softly with his fingers, grinning like he had won the lottery -- and then she leaned back and punched him in the eye.

            Buck’s head whipped sideways, and the men behind her exclaimed with loud shouts of secondhand pain. She looked over her shoulder at the table of men and they scrambled backwards, clearly unwilling to be the next target of her wrath. Ella stayed in her seat, swirling the drink in her hand and smiling widely, enjoying the drama.

            Buck straightened up, his hand plastered to his eye, but he was smiling knowingly. “Interesting. I actually liked that,” he said, and Karolina gave him a withering look before she stomped through the crowd and exploded out of the bar.

            She was fuming. It had felt like a violation, and no one had ever really kissed her before, and she resented that people had seen him do it, and that now other men would assume that she was the type of woman who let men kiss her whenever they wanted. The night had deepened outside, and she didn’t know what time it was, but she was going to stalk back towards her room and throw every one of Ella’s personal belonging out of their window. But someone grabbed onto her wrist, and she swung around to slap another soldier who thought they could put their hands on her but stopped mid-swing. It was Speirs.

            He looked as if he had a fever. There was a maniacal glint in his eye, and he seemed out of breath. She had never seen him like that, and her gut instinct told her to step away, to give him some space, but he latched on to her other wrist and held her in place. They were in the middle of the road, but he didn't seem to mind, and so she stood there, frozen, while she watched his face morph from fury to despair to a crazed intensity.

            "Did you want him to kiss you?" he said finally, and it didn't sound like a question.

            "No," she said, and he nodded to himself, dropping her wrists and reaching for his side arm before turning away. Karolina snatched at his bicep before he could get out of reach. "Do not hurt him."

            Ron looked at her as if she were out of her mind. "He touched you," he said, as if he were speaking to a child. "Without your consent."

            "I agreed to dance with him," she said. She tightened her grip on his arm, sliding her hands down to his wrist. "He was making a joke. To make you angry. He is a fool."

            Ron stared at her. "Do you..." He sighed and ran a hand across his hair, his body radiating frustration. "Jesus Christ, _do_ you?"

            "Do I want him to live? Yes," she said with huff. It wasn't what he was asking, she knew, but she didn't want Buck to die just because she didn't want him. Ron looked down at her hands, and slowly set his free one on top of her fingers. "I am sorry."

            Ron looked off into the forest on the side of the road. "I should be apologizing. I didn't know. That you were leaving, I didn't know that. I just saw them... acting differently, I saw you acting..." He turned to look at her face. "You're going to Paris."

            "Yes," she said with a nod, and then her voice caught in her throat, and she reached up to feel her neck, this strange tightness, and then she realized that her heart was beating like crazy, and then she looked over at him and her palms began to sweat, and she could feel her pulse in her jaw and _oh mein Gott, was war los...._

Ron had gone very still, so still that she noticed the freckle in his eye. She felt possessed, as if she had left her own body, and was watching from somewhere vaguely above her head... She felt her arm move as she reached up, carefully placed her hand against his cheek, felt the stubble of his day-old shave and stepped closer, and Ron was frozen, his eyes wide as she leaned in and looked closer at his irises, which were both green and brown, and beautiful. And then he snapped.

            His hands were around her waist, heavy and warm and he leaned his forehead down to hers, and she could smell his aftershave, and then she pushed forward and gently put her lips on his. She stayed there for a second before pulling back, reading his stillness as disgust, and she could feel the heat of her blush on her neck and looked down at her feet.

            Ron blinked. He took a deep breath. And then he grabbed her hand in his and dragged her over towards the alleyway between a neighboring cottage and an old barn. Karolina stumbled in her heels, and he slowed down enough that she could keep up with him.

            They reached the shadows, and he stopped and turned to look down at her. "I am sorry if --" she said, but then his hands were in her hair and he pushed her back until she met the wall and then he wrapped a hand around her waist.

            "Stop apologizing," he said hoarsely. And then he tilted her chin up towards his face and was really kissing her.

            When she had lived in Berlin, she would listen to the stories the girls would tell when they came back from their dates, stories about shy boys and gentle kisses stolen on buses and taxis and the delicate way the boys would hold their hands and stroke their hair and kiss them lightly on the cheek, as the Reich said was proper before marriage.

            This was not that. This was rough -- his stubble scratched her upper lip and cheek, and it hurt but the pain was fine, she didn't mind the pain -- and urgent in the way he was invading her space, and his hand was gripping her hair, holding her head back, and she felt her hands separate and weave around his waist, hanging on to him tightly. This kissing made the back of her knees tingle and her chest feel hot, this kind of kissing was possessive and needy and a far cry from what the magazines had told her to expect, from what actors did in the movies. She pressed herself closer to him, part of her brain telling her not to and the other part saying _fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, you're going to die anyway, you're going to die alone._ Ron grabbed her and pulled her closer, if it was possible, and he broke off the kissing only to press his lips below her jaw, and Karolina heard herself making sounds she didn't think would ever come from her mouth, sounds that would probably embarrass her if she were capable of caring.

            "Don't leave," he was mumbling against her skin. "Don't leave again, don't leave me..."

            She closed her eyes. Her heart felt as if it would burst. "I do not want to," she whispered, and she realized with a shock that she was telling the truth.

            He pulled his face away from her neck and smiled at her, and it was victorious, the smile of someone who had won. He lifted his hand and traced her cheekbone, her jawline, the bridge of her nose with his index finger, his eyes flickering over every freckle and scar, his lips pressing against the thin white line left behind by the stitches. "You're mine."

            She tried to swallow and found that she couldn't. She was breathing as if she had run a mile, and she ran her hands up his chest and into his hair, and it was so soft, softer than she thought a man's hair would feel.

            He traced the pulse point in her neck. "Say it."

            " _Du bist mein,_ " she whispered.

            He seemed to understand -- Ron buried his face in her hair and held her tighter. "If he touches you again, I'll kill him." She stiffened, but he wasn't going to let her go. "You're not going to Paris. You're staying here, with me."

            She stood on her tiptoes and looked him in the eye. "Kidnap me."

            He hummed to himself and pecked her softly, a far cry from the greedy kisses from before. "Don't tempt me." He placed his hand on the side of her throat and rubbed his thumb over her skin. "We could go to Ireland. The isles up in Scotland. They wouldn't find us."

            She closed her eyes. "They will always find me," she said. She had to tell him her fears, her suspicions about Paris and her imminent death, but when she opened her eyes, he looked happier than she had ever seen him, and she couldn't. "Why did you hate me so much?"

            He sighed. "I didn't. I wanted you, even when I didn't like you. I had to have you, I think about you every day." Ron stopped and ran a hand through her hair, combing out her curls. "You're one of my kind," he said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "I wanted to be like you."

            She wanted to touch his lips, so she did, because she could, and he smiled. "I wanted to be like you, too."

            "Fate," he said, and then he ducked down and kissed her slowly, and this time she was ready, and they stayed there in the dark until Karolina began to shiver from the cool night air. Ron took off his uniform jacket and draped it across her shoulders, and then walked her back to her billet with his arm around her waist. He kissed her by the front gate, holding her against him.

            "Tomorrow," he ordered. "Meet me in the pasture after lunch. And then we're taking a train to Wales."

            She smiled against his lips. She felt lightheaded, giddy, and she could see that didn't want to leave her, so she let go of his hands dashed up the front steps of the cottage and closed the door behind her.

            Karolina thought she had done a great job of silently sneaking in past a sleeping Ella and taking off the dress and crawling into bed, but once she had settled and the room had gone quiet again, she heard the box springs shift in the other bed as Ella rolled over.

            "You're welcome," Ella said into the darkness, and Karolina sat up and immediately began throwing pillows across the bedroom. Ella began to laugh, open and clear and joyful, and Karolina buried her face into her pillow and smiled so widely that her cheeks hurt.  

* * *

 

            Karolina woke up the next morning and pressed a hand to her chest. She felt as if she was going to burst, and there was a curious welling inside her rib cage, one that made her take a shaky breath and want to scream.

            _Calm down, Shutze._ But she couldn't. She wanted to throw on her clothes and go find Ron and roll in the grass with him. She felt her cheeks with the back of her hand. Definitely hot, feverish even. Was this how she was going to feel from now on? If so, she was doomed.

            She looked up to see Ella had gone, once again rendezvousing with Bill Guarnere, and Karolina let an indulgent smile spread across her face at the thought. Everything seemed less trite, more frivolous. She got out of bed and looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was irritated from Ron's stubble, and she patted the redness with her fingers. Her eyes were brighter, and there was a hint of a smile on her face.

            She had a free morning. A walk was not out of the question -- who cared if it was misty and cool outside? She had to get rid of this nervous energy that made her want to bounce around the room. Maybe Nixon was awake. Maybe Nixon would like to walk with her.

            She turned to get her pants out of her trunk, and then she really looked at the clothes and papers piled inside from the previous day's packing, and she was hit with a pain in her stomach that made her sink down to the floor. Oh, Christ, she didn't want to go, she didn't want to leave, things had become so wonderful, impossibly good, her friends liked her, and Ron was _hers_ and everything was going well for once in her life, and she leaned forward and rested her forehead on the floor and took a deep breath to stop shaking. She was falling apart.

            "I don't want to go," she said to the floorboards. "Please. I don't want to go."

            Karolina pushed herself up with her palms and looked out the window. The mist was clearing. She dressed quickly, doing her best to ignore the trunk, and tied up her boots and nearly ran down the stairs of her billet and out the front door.

            The morning was crisp and bright, and she nodded to the Easy men she passed on the street, who gave her wary, appraising looks. At first she was confused, but then she remember Buck, who she had forgotten in the swirl of emotion and touch and goodness, and she groaned internally. She should probably forgive him.

            "Hey," a voice said behind her, and she turned to find Nixon following her up the road, dressed in PT gear and sweating from a run, or whiskey, or both. "What are you doing---" he began, but then he stopped in his tracks and stared at her.

            "What?" she asked. He didn't reply, just tilted his head, his eyes narrowing. "What!"

            He stepped closer. "Did you..." He began to smile. "You didn't. Oh Christ, no, you did..."

            She pursed her lips. "I don't know what you mean."

            "You're cheerful," he said, in an accusatory tone. "You're _never_ cheerful. You look lit up inside."

            She avoided his eyes and turned to look down the road. "Were you running? You never run..."

            Nixon grabbed onto her arm. "Did he finally do it?" he asked, a shit-eating grin on his face. "Oh my God, _he did._ "

            "Lewis," she said, mortified. "Enough."

            "Do you like him?" Nixon asked. She looked down at her boots, and then glared up at him from under her lashes, and Nixon hollered so loudly that everyone on the street jumped. She grabbed on to him and dragged him down a lane, away from the curious eyes. "Holy shit. _Holy shit_. Christ, my stomach hurts." He paused and rested his hands on his knees. "No more stalking, no more obsessing, Christ Almighty!"

            Karolina was mortified. "Stop it, will you?" She kicked him in the leg, and he yelped in protest. "Stop!"

            "God, you two were forged in the depths of hell for each other," Nixon said, smiling as if he had been freed from prison. "You'd better keep this quiet."

            "Well, I am trying, but if you continue to scream in the road..."

            He pelted her with questions as they walked to breakfast, and she dodged every one of them. _What had he said?_ "Nothing unusual." _Did he threaten to kill Buck?_ "Of course, I can tell he has wanted to kill Buck since Carentan." _Did he kiss her?_ "..." _DID HE?_ "Enough!"

            Ella was already feasting on what looked like gravy over biscuits in the dining hall when they entered. She sent Karolina a knowing smile and raised her eyebrows. "Sleep well?"

            "No," Karolina answered shortly, and Ella chortled with a mouthful of biscuit. "This looks disgusting."

            "Well, go get some, and if you do not like it, I will eat yours," Ella said matter-of-factly. She took a gulp of coffee and patted the seat next to her, and Nixon plopped down in the empty space. They put their heads together and began to whisper conspiratorially, both with shit-eating grins that Karolina couldn't stand. She sighed and headed towards the food line.

            Luz was standing with Perconte near the end of the queue, and she said hello as she fell in behind them. They both looked her up and down, appraising her. "What?" she said, putting her hands on her hips.

            "Nothing!" they both said quickly. Luz laughed nervously. "Just, you know, wondering who you're going to punch next."

            "Anyone who touches me without my permission," she said bluntly.

            Perconte widened his eyes. "Well, now that you mention it, could I..." Luz began.

            "No."

            He laughed to himself and shook his head. "One of these days, Lina, you'll see the light."

            "Not in a million years," she said, but knocked his shoulder. He grinned at that and handed her a metal tray.

            They shuffled down the line and stopped as an orderly came and lifted away the pan of gravy away from the hot plate. "What was wrong with that?" Perconte exclaimed. "It's half-full!"

            Then man behind the biscuits shrugged. "New batch coming," he said, and then he looked Karolina squarely in the face. She ignored him until a few seconds had passed, and then she met his gaze -- fair skin, brown hair, a little dumpy-looking. He held it for a minute before turning and disappearing into the kitchen behind him, and she furrowed her brow as a suspicious feeling crept up her back. She reached into her pocket to hold her knife, to reassure herself. _Don't overreact. Just a bitter KP man._

            "Oh great, now the biscuit guy is gone," Luz said, throwing up his hands. "Fuck me, I guess!"

            Karolina rolled her eyes. A blonde man came back with a pan full of fresh gravy, and a lumpy pile of bread and sauce was heaped on her plate and shoved at her from behind the counter. She placed it on her platter and grimaced. Ella would definitely be receiving this meal.

            She returned to the table to find that Nixon had stolen an entire coffee pot from somewhere, and he and Ella were deep in a conversation that came to an abrupt halt as soon as Karolina walked into earshot. She dropped her tray onto the table and scowled. "Please, continue your discussion."

            "Okay," Ella said breezily, reaching over and pouring Karolina a cup of coffee. "I was just telling Nixon that I saw you and Speirs disappear into an alleyway, so I should be the one to win the bet."

            She stiffened, and Nixon widened his eyes at Ella. The Italian shrugged and flipped her hair over her shoulder. "What? Are we going to keep it a secret now?"

            "Uh, yeah," Nixon said. "That's usually the nature of bets..."

            "What. Bet." Karolina said. She could feel the heat creeping up her neck, and she took a glance around the dining hall to make sure no one else could hear them.

            "Nixon and me had a bet on when you would fall for Speirs," Ella said.

            Nixon looked at Karolina from the corner of his eye and made himself busy with his coffee. Karolina leaned her elbows on the table and rested her face in her hands.

            "He said before Normandy, I said after," Ella said. She grabbed Karolina's biscuits and pulled them towards her. "So, you owe me twenty dollars."

            "Absolutely not," Nixon replied. "I specified a time and date, and that was the deal. You never gave me a time or date and so the bet is invalid on your end."

            Ella dug into the biscuits, took two massive bites and rolled her eyes. "Wrong," she said, then coughed. "Coffee?"

            Karolina slid hers over. She deeply resented the idea of a bet being made against her, that these two could have possible known what she was thinking and feeling months ahead of time. "I hate you two."

            "I love you --" Ella said, and then coughed again, harder this time. Nixon frowned and patted her on the back, but she waved him away and took another sip of coffee. "Ugh."

            "Slow down," Karolina said. "Take a breath between bites."

            Ella swallowed hard, her forehead furrowed. "Sorry," she said, clearing her throat. She lifted the cup of coffee to her lips, and Karolina saw her hand tremble slightly. Ella swayed in her seat a little, and she dropped the coffee onto the table, sloshing the liquid over the sides of the mug.

            Karolina half-rose from her chair and placed her hand on Ella's shoulder. The girl coughed again, so hard that she splashed the food onto her lap, and she pushed back her chair with her hand around her throat and took a few steps before she wobbled and collapsed onto the ground. Her head hit the floor with a thunk that made Karolina's stomach turn over.

            Nixon was out of his chair immediately. "Get a medic!" he yelled to the men in the hall, who had halted their breakfast, stunned, and then everything was swirling around them, people were yelling and running, and Ella was still laying on the floor, not moving. Karolina climbed over the table and fell to her knees beside her, lifted her up so that she rested against her chest and wiped the hair out of the girl's eyes.

            Her neck was turning blue.

            "Ella," Karolina said. "Look at me, look at me." The girl's hands went to her throat as she gasped for air, and then she began to shake, to convulse in Karolina's arms, and a thin line of blood ran from her nose and over her lips. Ella's eyes were wide, never breaking away from Karolina's, silently pleading for help, and she was trying to speak, trying to say something, but there was no air.

            Nixon backed away and stood up. "Drop the food! Don't touch the fucking food!" The clatters of trays and coffee echoed throughout the room. He strode down the aisle before turning and coming back again, panicking. "Where's the goddamn medic?"

            Karolina forced open the girl's mouth, tried sticking her fingers down her throat, but Ella convulsed again and began to foam at the mouth, her eyes bloodshot. "No, no, no," Karolina kept saying, and Ella's eyes glanced between Karolina and Nixon, tears running down the side of her cheeks. Karolina held on to her as the girl's limbs twitched and flailed, and her mind could not process this, no, this couldn't be happening, not to Ella, who had never done anything wrong. _There's nothing you can do._ She pushed the thought away. The foam was turning pink, was running down her chin.

            Roe came running into the hall, his footfalls shaking the wooden floorboards. "Outta the way," he yelled, pushing men aside and dropping down next to Karolina. He grabbed on to Ella's shoulders and turned her head towards him, lifted her up and tilted her head back. "Hey, _cherie_ , I got ya, I got ya, it's okay..." Roe looked up at Karolina, and the expression on his face confirmed her fears. Arsenic.

              _Arsenic poisoning is perhaps the cruelest punishment one can inflict on their enemy. It is quick, painful, and the victim is mentally aware throughout their death. It causes the windpipe to close and the stomach to bleed, and there is no cure, no way to stop Death once his hand is wrapped around their throat._

The biscuit. The new gravy. It had been meant for her. And she had given it to Ella.

            Ella grabbed onto Karolina's hand. The fear in the girl's eyes was going dull, going inward to a place Karolina couldn't follow. She held on tightly. "It's okay, it's okay..." She heard herself repeating the words. Roe placed a hand on her shoulder, and she shrugged him off. "It's okay, it's okay. You are okay. It's okay."

            Everyone had gone quiet. Karolina had been rocking Ella back and forth, hadn't even noticed, and she was so still. Karolina couldn't look. "It's..." The words died on her tongue. The silence rang in her ears.

            The men had their hands over their mouths. "Lina," Nixon said, bending down and placing a shaking hand on her back. "Lina, she's go --"

            " _No."_

Not possible. No, there wasn't a world without Ella in it. Not after everything they had been through. Not after what they had survived.

            "Lina," Nixon said, his voice breaking, and she finally looked down.

            Ella's face had gone blue, her eyes were open and bloody with burst vessels, and her mouth was slack. Karolina held on tighter. "No," she said to herself. "No." Her hands and feet began to tingle, and she sat back, cradling the girl to her chest. Karolina's face was cold. She was crying.

            Roe sat back on his heels and spoke to Luz, who she noticed was standing next to Nixon, shock plastered all over his face. "Go tell the team to get a stretcher in here," he said quietly. Luz nodded silently and disappeared into the crowd.

            Nixon held onto Karolina's shoulders. "We need to let her go."

            Not possible.

            Men came with a stretcher, took Ella from her arms, and Karolina smoothed Ella's hair out of her face. "Please," she heard herself saying. "She is my friend. Please, don't." But they lifted her away from the ground and carried her out of the dining hall, and Nixon wrapped his arms around Karolina as she rocked back and forth on her knees.

            "She's my friend," she said between breaths. "She's my friend."

* * *

 

            She had destroyed their room. She blinked, looked down at her hands, noticed that they were bleeding, dripping red splatter over the carpet. Someone was pounding on her door, but she was frozen where she stood, looking at the mess that surrounded her.

            The mirror over the dresser had been shattered, the beds ripped apart, her trunk kicked over, vases smashed, and the contents of tabletops swiped to the ground. Her throat felt raw, and then she realized she had been screaming, screaming so loudly that she had probably distressed the neighbors. She looked down at the gun in her hand. Where had that come from? It felt cool and comforting, and she scratched the back of her head with it. Now her blood was on her cheek and neck. She closed her eyes.

            "Karolina!" It was Nixon, and there was someone else, too, judging from the sound of the boots on the stairs. "Open the door!"

            No.

            She sat down on her destroyed day bed and pressed the metal of the gun to her face. It felt comforting on her hot skin.

            The door rattled in its frame.

            She wished they would leave her alone. _Your fault your fault your fault YOUR FAULT YOUR FAULT._ Her face crumpled, and she pressed the muzzle of the gun under her chin. She had told them. She had tried to warn them. _You're not safe when you're around me._

            The door burst open, and Karolina turned to see Nixon and Buck freeze in the doorway. Nixon's eyes went immediately to the gun in her hand.

            "Lina," he said slowly, softly. "What are you doing?"

            She stared at him, her hand steady. Nothing made sense anymore. His English didn't translate in her head. She readjusted her grip on the gun, and then Buck stepped into the room. She narrowed her eyes.

            "Hey," he said soothingly. "Why don't you put that down?"

            " _Gehen Sie weg._ "

            "I don't speak German, honey, remember?" He took another step into the room and she stood up. He quickly retreated. "Okay, okay, it's fine. I won't come any closer."

            "Lina, please," Nixon said, stretching an arm out towards her. "Give me the gun."

            She heard other voices, other people outside of the window, and tears prickled in the corner of her eyes. " _Jeder verlässt mich, und es ist meine Schuld, meine Schuld ..."_

            Buck backed out of the room, and Nixon put his hand on the iron railing of Ella's bed, _Ella's_ bed, _oh God, oh God, oh God..._ "I'm not leaving you," he said. "I love you. Please put the gun down, Karolina, don't do this."

            The floorboards squeaked, and Karolina looked towards the door. It was Ron. He was pale and his eyes were livid, and he walked right into the middle of the room, pushing past Nixon. Her resolve faltered as she took in the pain on his face.

            "Drop it," he said quietly, his voice shaking. "Now." She blinked, and suddenly the gun felt so heavy in her hand, and she stared at him as she placed the gun on her destroyed bed.

            He was across the room and in front of her in a second, and he grabbed on to her arms as her legs went out from under her, and he sank down to the floor beside her. "Why would you do that," he said, his voice angry but frightened. "Why would you do it." He held her in his lap, and she turned her face into his shirt, and she was shaking, holding on to him as if he would slip away from her, too.

            She heard Nixon stand. "I'll go get Doc," he said, and he walked out of the room and shut the door quietly behind him.

            "Look at me," Ron said lowly, and when she didn't turn, he shook her a little. "Look at me!" She lifted her face, and he cupped her cheek, his hand firm. "Don't you ever, _ever,_ do that again. Do you understand me?" She gulped and felt the rawness of her throat. There was pain behind his eyes. "Do you?"

            "Yes," she whispered.

            He wasn't letting go. "You're not going anywhere," he said under his breath. "Not without me. I won't allow it." He was so scared. It was the first time that she had seen him look scared.

            "It was meant for me," she said.

            His eyes narrowed. "Who was it?"

            "Pale, brown hair, bad skin, overweight," she replied. "In the kitchen. He looked right at me. I should have known." She pointed to Ella's bed. "They sent me that. It was on my bed."

            Ron reached over and picked up the heavy card stock. He held it up to the light, trying to decipher the thick, Germanic handwriting. "What does it say?"

            "' _Kapitulieren._ Submit."

            He dropped the card onto the floor and wiped the blood from her face. She was so tired. "Where's Ella?"

            Ron sighed. "In the medical tent. They cleaned her up." He shifted slightly. "They made her look like herself again. I think a local woman lent her cosmetics."

            "She's Catholic," Karolina said. Her head hurt so badly. "I want a mass for her. She deserves a mass."

            Ron nodded. "I'll take care of it." He rubbed the side of her arm and dropped his face into her hair.

            Footsteps on the stairs again, and then Roe was kneeling beside them. "Got something for you," he said, flicking a syrette, and Karolina stuck out her arm without hesitation. She flinched when the needle pierced her skin, but she settled into the warmth running through her veins, and then everything was dark for a long time.

* * *

 

            Nixon watched Ron pick up Karolina and lay her down on the bed, careful to make sure her head hit the pillow, and then watched him stand there and rub a hand across his face. He turned towards Nixon, and the despair in his eyes radiated throughout the room.

            Nixon turned and walked down the stairs, and Ron followed. The small crowd that had gathered when Karolina had started screaming -- so loudly that Nixon had thought she was being attacked, killed by whoever had tried to kill her this morning -- had dispersed, and Nixon took out two cigarettes, lit them, and handed one to Ron. The man took it silently and dragged long and hard before exhaling.

            "I'll go speak to Father Michalis," Nixon said. "I think there's a little Catholic church not far from here. I'm sure they would be willing to make accommodations, considering the... circumstances."

            "She can't leave like this," Ron said, not hearing anything Nixon said. "They can't send her to France like that."

            "They can, and will," Nixon said, thinking of how much he wanted to knock Tar's head against a brick wall until it went soft. "I hate it. But they have the power here."

            Ron was quiet for a while, and then he threw the cigarette to the ground. "They're going to kill her too, aren't they?"

            Nixon stared at him. "They're going to try. The Brits, the Nazis -- everyone is going to try."

            Ron stared up at Karolina's window. Things were eerily quiet now. "Let them try," he muttered to himself. "Let them try and see what happens."

* * *

 

            She didn't cry when she helped put Ella into her favorite navy dress, ignoring the cold, stiff feeling of the girl's warm, tan skin. She didn't cry when the men of Easy carried the casket into the small chapel, with Bill Guarnere acting as the lead pallbearer, a look of disbelief on his face. She didn't cry when she kneeled on the cold stone floor and recited the prayers she had learned in Latin and German when the rest of the men spoke in English, and she didn't cry when they lowered the box that held Ella into the deep hole in the ground. She picked up a handful of dirt and sprinkled it over the casket lid while she gripped Ella's rosary tightly in her other hand, and then she left the church, holding onto Nixon's arm with Ron walking quietly behind her. Her hands and face felt numb. Only a strange throbbing in her heart let her know that this was all real, that it wasn't some horrible nightmare that she had dreamed up on her own.

            She returned to their room, which had been cleaned and rearranged, and began to pack her things. Bile rose in her throat as she folded clothes absentmindedly. Tar had extended her departure time to the afternoon but hadn't come down for the funeral. He had a sent a large box instead, one that contained a proper German woman's uniform -- dark grey jacket with a dark grey skirt that fell to the knees, grey leather gloves and skin-toned nylons, and a pair of regulatory brogues. She traced the _Reichsadler_ that was pinned to her jacket pocket with her fingers, and she walked to the window, opened it, and threw up into the bushes below. It was her old uniform. They had gotten the bloodstains out, somehow, but it was hers. It even smelled the same.

            _I'll never put you in a German uniform again, if I can help it._ Liar.

            Tar had also included a dissembled MP40 sub machine gun, which did not fit in with her uniform, but she was thankful for something to defend herself with, at least. She locked her trunk, pulled off her black clothes, and numbly dressed herself in her new-old uniform.

            It was funny how she hadn't forgotten the way the buckle didn't quite work, or the correct way to button down her sleeves. She remembered every single detail of the way it fit -- the scratchiness of the iron shirt was familiar, the stiffness of the outer jacket one that she was used to. She placed her cap on her head, picked up the box of gun parts, and left her billet.

            Was it insane to walk down an English street dressed in a Nazi uniform? She didn't care. She had a message to send to anyone who was following her, targeting her -- _this is where I come from._ She would be considered dangerous. She wanted Ella's killer to know fear. They would know what it was like to fear her.

            The roads were empty. Things had gone quiet after Ella's death. Skip told her that Bill wouldn't leave his bunk. Nixon said that Easy Company had been given a few days off of training for the shock to wear off. She held the box under her arm and strode towards the officer's headquarters.

            Welsh and Buck were smoking outside when she walked up, and they froze when they saw her standing at the gate. Their eyes were fearful before they recognized her, and then their faces went blank. They stared as she walked past and entered the house. She didn't offer them a greeting.

            Conversation paused when she opened the door and stepped inside. Winters, Nixon, Ron and Roe had all been sitting around the hearth, their heads together and speaking quietly, but now they looked at her with incredulous expressions. Ron stood up and pursed his lips, his hands turning into clenched fists. She knew it would kill him to see her in her old uniform.

            "When I first arrived, you wanted to know what I was," she said. She dropped the box onto the table in front of her with a bang. Welsh and Buck walked through the open door behind her, and she looked over her shoulder at them. "I had many secrets. Things I would kill if someone discovered." She took off the lid of the box. "Well, here I am. This is what I am."

            Nixon stood up. "You're not a Nazi," he said quietly.

            "No?" Karolina replied as she picked up the handle of the gun and screwed the barrel onto it. "You do not think so?" She twisted the muzzle onto the barrel. "I went into it willingly. No one forced me to kill people, but I did it anyway. That's who I am." She snapped the bump stock into place and held the gun by her side. "No secrets anymore. Secrets robbed me of Ella. Secrets are worthless now."

            "Karolina," Winters said hesitantly.

            She stared at the fire that crackled behind the grate. "I have been hiding who I was because I was afraid, because I wanted to forget, to be forgiven for what I have done. But I cannot forget. This war will not let me forget." She looked up at Ron, who nodded at her, who seemed to understand. "I know what I am. I know what I do. I embrace it. I want you all to accept it. Because I cannot survive if I stay the way I was. I have to be who I am, when all of this first began. That is how I will beat them, because I know them -- I am one of them. I will crush whoever did this."

            The men were silent. Welsh patted her elbow. "I believe you," he said.

            "Good," she said curtly. "Now, I am going to go back to France. And I am going to kill them all."

           


	22. Le Prélude

Chapter Twenty-Two

_Le Prélude_

_Aldbourne, England; Utah Beach, Normandy_

_July/August 1944_

_Think. Think. Don't feel. Think._

Karolina sat on the edge of her bed inside her empty, clean billet. Too clean. The absence of Ella meant the absence of mess. She had always grumbled about Ella throwing things on the floor and not returning them to their proper place. Now, everything felt too sterile, and the other side of the room was deafening in its tidiness. She turned her back to the other twin bed and smoothed her gray skirt over her thighs. The stiffness of the wool felt abrasive on her palms. The air in the room was so cold.

Beside her on the bed lay the assembled sub-machine gun. She grabbed its stock and dragged it onto her lap. It felt as familiar as the uniform, and it centered her for a brief moment. You need to make a plan.

" _Ich weiß das_."

So, get to it.

She closed her eyes.

_Drive down to Upottery. Get in a small plane. Land in Utah Beach, meet a person whose identity you don't know. Travel with them to Paris in a… car? truck?... posing as an intelligence agent. Fine. Then overthrow the Reich and somehow force occupiers to leave Paris._

"Fuck!"

She slammed her fist down on the mattress. There was no way to anticipate the outcome, no way to know what would happen when she reached France. The unknown had always driven her insane.

_I'm already insane._  She shook her head and collapsed backwards onto the bed.

* * *

After Karolina had stormed out of the officer's billet, Nixon had sat back down in his spindly wooden chair by the fireplace - the other officers had drawn closer to the fire as well, as if the warmth of the flames could chase away the chaos, the sadness, the foreboding that had descended upon the town after Ella's death. Karolina's appearance in her old uniform had made Nixon's throat tighten – This is who I am, she had said, forcing them to recognize her as the enemy, as part of the entity they had been fighting against. The hardness in her eyes frightened him. Whatever happened in France, whatever the outcome, she would give in to the brutality that was necessary to win. And if she came back, he knew that she wouldn't be the same.

Dick was the first to break the silence. "Guarnere won't leave his bed," he said quietly. "I don't know what to do about that."

Welsh sighed heavily. "He is eating, though. Took him some dinner yesterday, and Tab told me he ate breakfast this morning. They're all still wary about the food in the mess hall."

Nixon nodded. "Yeah, we have guys looking out for the man that Karolina saw serving food that morning."  _The splatter of the coffee that had dropped from Ella's hand. The foam running down her chin, the blue eyes so vivid against the burst blood vessels. Karolina screaming._  He blinked hard and rubbed his eyelids with his fingers. "Whoever he was, he's gone."

"She can't go to France like that," Buck said to himself. In the corner, Ron stiffened slightly - Nixon watched the man's eyes flick towards Buck, and he sat up in his chair. He didn't know if he could hold Ron back if he were to lunge at Buck, but they couldn't afford another fight. Sink was up in arms about the poisoning and had threatened to cut Karolina loose from the Airborne altogether. And Nixon knew as well as anyone that if that happened, they'd never see her again.

"I mean, when Nix and I got up to the room, she was…" Buck stopped and swallowed, glanced over at Ron. "Well, she had a gun to her throat. Couldn't even speak English, couldn't understand what we were saying. I mean, the look in her eyes… she didn't even know what she was doing."

"Jesus Christ," Welsh said.

Ron took a drag from his cigarette and stared down at his boots. Did anyone other than Nixon notice the slight tremor in the man's hand as he flicked off the ash?

"We don't have a choice," Winters said plainly. "She's made some contingency plans and asked me to carry them out if she doesn't come back." Nixon leaned forward at that, and Dick gave the men a serious look. "She wants us to destroy her belongings. Any trace that she was here, it needs to go. She says it's for our own safety."

"No," Ron said from the edge of the circle. He said it so quietly that Nixon thought he had misheard at first.

"What?" Buck said.

Ron leaned into the light, and Nixon recognized the manic look in his eyes. He had seen the expression too many times on Karolina's face to miss it. "She'll be back."

Buck glanced at Welsh, who shrugged. "We've all come to care about Karolina's well-being, but I think it's smart to recognize a lost cause when you -"

Ron stood up from his chair and turned to face Buck. He took a step towards the seated man, and Welsh tensed. Ron watched Buck for a moment before leaning down and smashing the butt of his cigarette in the ashtray next to the blonde lieutenant's chair. The mask of calm had once again settled over his face. "I'll take care of it," he said, any hint of emotion washed away from his voice. "I'll ride down with her tomorrow. See her off. If that's fine."

Winters raised his eyebrows but didn't comment. "Sure, that would be helpful."

Ron nodded to himself once, and then made his way across the room and out the front door, shutting it carefully behind him.

Nixon leaned back in his seat and released the breath he had been holding. Winters grimaced and scratched his head, and Welsh chuckled darkly.

"Well, that confirms it," Welsh said under his breath.

"What?" Buck asked, but Welsh just shook his head.

* * *

In her sleep, she felt a hand weave its way through her hair, and then a pleasant warmth on her lips. Karolina started awake to see a figure above her and she froze.

"It's me," the shadow over her bed said, and the tension flowed out of her arms and legs. She groaned and blinked through the sleep in her eyes, and reached up to feel the starched collar of a khaki shirt.

"What are you doing?"

Ron sat down on the side of her bed. "I'm taking you to Upottery," he said, running his fingers around the curve of her ear. "You're so warm."

She leaned in to his palm. "You were supposed to kidnap me."

He hummed. "I'm working on it."

_We've run out of time._  She didn't say it. She wanted to entertain the fantasy of a world where she could stay with him forever, for as long as possible. Karolina pushed herself up from underneath the covers and cracked her neck. Her body ached and she still felt exhausted despite the fact that she had slept through the night, which was rare – she had just drifted off the evening before, laying on her side.

Ron stepped out of the room as she put on her new uniform and washed her face. Her trunk was already packed, and she pushed it under her bed for someone to come and collect later. She lifted her pack and slung it over one shoulder, hating the way the strap rubbed against her uniform. She took one last look in the mirror before she walked out of the room. The woman staring back at her was clean-faced and had a healthy tan, with a lightness in her hair that had been absent in France.  _Memorize this_ , she told herself.  _You won't look like this for a long time._

Ron was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, in front of a Jeep that was idling on the street, occupied by one sleepy serviceman who glared at both of them as Ron opened the side door for her.

"I'm supposed to take only one person to Upottery," the driver snarled.

"I'm escorting her," Ron snapped back, and the driver blinked before shrugging and shifting the jeep into drive. Ron wrapped his arm around her back and pulled her in close as they sped out of the little town. Karolina watched the dark fields pass her by and smiled grimly.  _Goodbye, England._  She shivered in the cool morning air, and Ron rubbed the side of her arm.

The ease of the intimacy she felt with him surprised her. It had only been a few days, but she felt the compulsory need to reach out and hold onto him, and when she imagined how cold she would feel, how alone she would be when she flew over the Channel for her final mission, she began to shiver.

_Stop that_ , she told her muscles. They wouldn't listen.

Ron must have noticed, and he leaned into her ear. "Let me tell you why you're going to come back to me when this is over," he said, his voice low and serious. A wistful smile spread across her face; one she couldn't stop even if she wanted.

"You're strong. Strong enough to do what needs to be done. And you're smart enough to know when to run when things go to shit." She turned to look at him and took in the desperate gleam in his eyes. "If it goes wrong, get out of there. You can't save an entire city by yourself. I don't care what your boss from the SIS says. Find a way to survive."

"I don't run," she said.

"I know you don't," he said, shaking her a little. "But that's not what I mean. If there's no hope left, leave before they can kill you."

She took in a deep breath and held it for a moment before sighing. "I will."

"I know there are people out there who deserve your revenge," he said, placing a hand on her knee. "Don't go looking for them. Stay where you are. When the time comes, I'll help you. But don't go on your own. Promise me that."

She grimaced. She wasn't going to let him get anywhere near Droessler or within the sights of the SS. They would kill him in an instant if they knew what he was to her. She sucked on her teeth.  _No_.

"Lina," he said, and she looked at him. He had no idea what awaited her in Germany. He didn't know what he was signing up for. "Promise me."

_I can't._  She wondered if the internal struggle was playing out on her face. He tightened his grip on her knee. One lie wouldn't hurt him. Not if she did everything right the first time. He didn't have to know. A lie could save him, save them all.

"Fine," she said stiffly.  _But no promises._

"When you come back to us, I'll have your things." Her heart skipped a beat in her chest.  _Who had told him?_  "I'm making arrangements. I'm going to make sure you get out of Europe for good. If you have to hide, so be it. But I'm taking you far away from here, somewhere safe."

_They'll never let me get away._  But he looked so sorrowful, so determined that she couldn't bear to say that aloud. If it gave them hope, who cared if it was fictitious? She wove her fingers through his.

"You're going to come back in one piece. You're going to stay alive." He said it matter-of-factly, as if his will could supersede what the world had in store for her. "You're going to come back, and I'll take care of everything. And we're going to track down everyone who has ever hurt you."

They rode the rest of the way in silence, with Ron holding her tightly against him, glaring at the little towns and misty fields as they sped past. She wondered if he knew how much things were about to change, if he would still like her enough to whisper these sweet things in her ear if she came back a monster. She was too afraid to ask.

When the jeep pulled up to the airfield, a single Spitfire waited on the tarmac, its pilot smoking a cigarette and leaning against the wing. The driver braked to a stop, and she climbed out of the back of the jeep stiffly and slung the pack over her shoulders. Ron walked beside her, his narrowed eyes assessing the pilot.

"I recognize him," he said under his breath, and Karolina scoffed as the pilot turned around to face them.

Mark Longshore smiled at her as she began to shake her head. "Bet you'd thought you'd seen the last of me," he said, reaching out his hand. Karolina took it and gave it a firm grip. "Ready to go?"

"Are you coming with me?"

He raised an eyebrow. "To Paris? Absolutely not. I'm just your puddle-jumper." He looked over at Ron with a curious expression in his eye. "Are you coming as well?"

"No," Ron said shortly, but he stepped forward, crowding Mark's personal space. "I need to brief Shutze before she leaves."

Mark stared at Ron for a moment, but he shrugged. "Fine, I'll check the tires." He gave Karolina a meaningful look before walking to the other side of the plane and playing with the air compressor gauges futilely, peeking at them out of the corner of his eye.

Ron turned to face her. He grasped onto her shoulders and stared daggers at the plane behind her. "I want to kiss you."

Her throat tightened, and she smiled sadly. "You can't."

He looked as if he were about to shoot out the tires. "I know."

Karolina hated how sad he looked.  _Make your last moment count._  "Do you want a souvenir from Paris?"

That worked. He cracked an angry smile, and she reveled in it. "Something shiny."

"Expensive taste," she said dryly, and despite the man in the jeep whining behind them, despite Mark spying on them from behind the plane, Ron drew her into a tight hug.

* * *

The ride across the Channel was smooth and uneventful. It was hard to believe that three months ago they would have been shot out of the sky for taking this same route. The water below the plane sparkled as the sun caught the crests of waves, and Karolina squinted into the cerulean sky. Mark was a fairly decent pilot, a skill she hadn't known he possessed – there had been nothing in his files about his ability to fly a plane, nor any training with the Air Force or RAF.

"Where have you been?" she yelled through the headset. It was strange to talk to someone who was isolated in front of you inside a glass bubble, even stranger to not be able to read the expression on Mark's face as he lied.

"Norway," Mark's voice crackled into her ears. "Dropping supplies to the Resistance there. And in the Netherlands, for a little while."

"Lucky you."

She saw Mark shake his head. "You're the lucky one," he said. "After everything I've heard."

She stared at the clouds above her head and let the radio silence speak for her.

"Anyway," Mark continued. "Can't wait to see Paris again. The guy who's meeting us is named Martin. Part of the Maquis leadership that's calling shots in the city. He's gonna be in some type of Kraut uniform, I'm not sure what he's posing as – you'll have to figure it out."

"I am an expert," she said dryly.

He grunted through the headset. "The guy that came with you – he's the lieutenant in Dog company, right?"

She scowled. "Yes."

"So, what was he doing taking you to the plane? Shouldn't Nixon be escorting you? Not like you need an escort, anyway."

Time for a change of subject. "Tar told me nothing about this mission. Gave me basic facts. He also did not tell me that you would be here."

"Well, things have been a little topsy-turvy in London," Mark said. The plane shifted right, and Karolina reflexively grabbed onto the controls in front of her. "They're betting high that the Germans are going to retreat across the Rhine before December."

"Paris is key, then."

Mark laughed. "Paris has always been key, but SIS and the Allied commanders want to start throwing their weight around. Taking Paris would be both strategically and morally devastating to the Nazis. But you know that."

"Why was I given only basic information?"

Mark turned his head towards her, never taking his eyes off of the sky. "You're hard to trust, lately. That was Tar's explanation." He paused, planning his next words carefully. "I think we all know that you have a desire to go back to Germany."

"Not for the reasons you think."

"I know that," Mark said. "But still – it looks bad."

Meaning that it looked bad for the SIS. The question was, how much did Mark know about Tar's motives? She doubted that he saw the Paris mission as a tidying-up measure from the SIS offices like she did. But then again, perhaps Mark was expendable in ways she didn't know. Perhaps he was also becoming a problem for the SIS. It was either that, or Tar had attached him to her as an informant on her moves and motives.

She was still mulling that over when they landed on a hastily-made runway near Utah Beach. There was nothing about Mark that made her question his intentions, but a strong amount of faith was required on both of their ends in order to believe what came out of the other's mouths.

_He can't suspect anything._

The plane bounced on the flattened grass before touching down completely, and Mark guided the Spitfire towards a bay where other planes were lined up next to a small hangar. A few men loitered outside of the building, smoking cigarettes and watching as the plane approached. One stepped forward after a moment and gestured over towards the right of the hangar. Mark swung the tail of the Spitfire around and came to a stop.

Karolina unbuckled her harness and removed the headset before unlatching the glass hutch and pushing it back. Mark climbed out of the cockpit and jumped down to the ground, walking forward to shake hands with the men that came to greet the plane. She grabbed her pack from the foot space beneath her and stood up. The wind was sticky with salt, the scent of the sea riding high on the wind. The last time she had been here, everything had smelled of blood. She inhaled deeply.

"Here," Mark said below her, offering a hand. She took it and jumped down from the side of the plane, ignoring the critical looks coming from the group of men huddled near the hangar. "Martin isn't here yet. He's thirty minutes late."

"Typical," Karolina said. The men near the hangar made no move to come near her.

"What are they?"

"Rangers," Mark said. "Not the friendliest."

She craned her neck to look around his shoulder. One of the men spat at the ground and stared her down. "I see," she replied.

They made themselves comfortable while waiting for the tardy Frenchman – Mark refused to leave her until he knew that she had rendezvoused with the right man, and she leaned up against the wing and took sips from her canteen. The sea breeze played with the wisps of her hair that had escaped her bun, and she sighed deeply. Mark turned a curious eye towards her, but she didn't meet his gaze. She didn't want to talk – he had already seen too much back at Upottery, and no doubt he was already concocting the report he would send to Tar.

A car horn honked in the distance, and a long, bulky silver Mercedes-Benz swung onto the landing strip, its driver struggling to shift the correct gears. Mark winced at the mechanical grating, looking pained at the poor treatment of the finely-crafted machine. The car swerved and came to an abrupt stop three feet in front of Karolina's shins, and the driver stuck his head out of the window. He removed his sunglasses and gave her a wide grin.

" _Bonjour_ ," he said, looking her up and down. "Clara?"

Karolina grimaced. "Correct."

Mark stepped towards the car, his eyebrows raised. "And you're Martin?"

"Of course," Martin said. "Who else would I be?" He leaned forward and wiggled his eyebrows at Karolina. "Get in, we are already late."

"Whose fault is that?" Mark said quietly, and Karolina shook her head. She grabbed her pack and walked to the side of the car. The backseat was empty except for a battered leather briefcase that had seen better days – she touched the brown splatter of old blood on the roof before throwing her pack on the floor.

Mark still didn't look convinced by the Frenchman in the Mercedes, but Karolina opened the passenger door anyway. He frowned at the Frenchman, who grimaced back at him. "Do you know how to drive?"

Martin cocked his head. "Want to see my license?"

"Thanks for the lift," she said over the top of the car, and Mark cracked a smile.

"Anytime," he said, motioning towards the plane. "Just give me a holler."

She slid into the passenger seat and gave Martin a once-over. Youngish, perhaps around her age if not a few years older, with bright blue eyes and dark brown hair that seemed too rich in hue to be natural – he shifted the car into gear and swung the massive Mercedes towards the road, nearly hitting Mark in the process. His German uniform was freshly ironed but his messy hair threw off the disguise.

"You are late," she said.

He shrugged. "I was detained, slightly." He reached over a hand. "Wilhelm."

She shook it. "Clara."

"Nice to meet you."

"Likewise." She ran her hand over the mahogany wood detailing inside the car. "Where did you get this?"

"I stole it," he replied. "It was pretty, and no one was around..." He glanced over towards her with a glint in his eyes. "I like stealing pretty things."

She ignored that. "I was not told anything about you."

He whistled. "Oh, you know, I am a man who takes advantage of the times." He dodged a pothole filled with mud, and Karolina clung onto the handle of the passenger door. "I can do a bit of everything. I have heard about you – what you did in Normandy, before the Invasion and during the landings. I am a fan."

She smoothed her skirt over her thighs. "What is the plan?"

He grinned to himself. "Why don't we get to know each other first?"

Karolina's grip on the door handle tightened.

* * *

Ron pushed open the door of the jeep in a daze. The driver had griped all the way back from Upottery about the ungodly hour, the amount of sleep he could be catching, the weather and anything else that had captured his attention. Ron had ignored him, chain-smoked Lucky Strikes and stared down at his boots.

_He had it all planned out in his head: a place in Boston for Lina - she would definitely want to live in the city, she was too restless for rural life - and a little cottage on the coast for him. A dog, maybe – did she like dogs?_  He hadn't thought to ask her. There was still so much about her he didn't know, so much of life outside the realm of war that he had never investigated. But he hadn't had the time. And time was up.

_No._

He walked into Aldbourne, heading towards the mess hall, not really seeing what was in front of him as he navigated the small, winding road. Men passed by and nodded hello, but he ignored them.

She lived so outside her own body, so far from the physical world in which he thrived. He needed the tangible, the possessions he could store up and count and tally their worth. But she was otherworldly, outer-worldly, physically present but always slightly out of reach, not needing material things, hardly ever eating or drinking. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and keep her safe, keep her with him. He wanted to put a ring on her finger and tether her to the earth under their feet. He wanted to take her out of the spirit world that entangled her.

He walked into the mess hall thirsting for a cup of coffee, desiring something harder that could distract him from the panic that would eventually take over his body, the self-inflicted torture his brain would ignite when he considered the fact that she was gone. He grabbed a steaming carafe from the counter and poured a generous amount into a tin mug.

"Hey, Ron," a quiet voice intoned behind him. He turned to see Dick Winters, who was freshly showered and shaved at six in the morning. "Mind if I grab a mug?"

He passed over a clean cup and poured Winters coffee, still lost in the whirl of emotions flickering through him at high speed. Dick motioned at the nearest table, and he followed Winters across the hall and took a seat.

"So," Winters started. "You saw off Schutze."

"I did," Ron said. He stared blankly down at his coffee.

"Everything go to plan?"

_No. If everything went to plan, we would be on a train to Wales right now._  "Yes," Ron said dryly. "Mark Longshore was her ride across the Channel."

Winters nodded, giving him a knowing glance. "This is the part where I'm supposed to warn you about conducting behavior unbecoming of a lieutenant towards a fellow service-member." Ron blinked, and Dick sighed. "That's what I'm supposed to do, anyway. But, given the circumstances..."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ron said blandly. He should have that tattooed on his forehead. The coffee tasted more bitter than usual.

Winters nodded, a tired look spreading over his face. "She'll be fine, Ron."

Ron tried to believe that. "Of course, Dick."

* * *

One hour into the three-hour journey to Paris, Martin looked over his shoulder at the briefcase in the back seat. "That is for you, by the way."

Karolina glanced at the dilapidated case. "What is it?"

"Necessities," Martin replied. He pulled a comb out of his pocket and ran it through his hair, which bounced back to its original messy flop. " _Merde_."

She turned and reached over the bench seat and grabbed the briefcase by the handle. It was heavier than it looked, and she grunted as she hauled it into the front seat. The latches popped open easily and she lifted the lid to find... a set of negligees. Very pink, very lacy, entirely transparent negligees. She pinched the strap of the first one with her thumb and index finger and held it up to Martin's face, a sour taste rising in the back of her throat.

"What the fuck is this?"

"Your disguise." His face screwed up into a wicked smile. "I would love to watch you try it on."

Her knife was in her hand and at his throat in the span of seconds. "This is not a fucking joke." The car swerved hard to the left, and Martin leaned back against the seat, the mirth drained from his face.

"Get the knife away from my face," he said tersely. Karolina only pressed the blade further into his skin, scraping the beard stubble growing under his jaw line. " _Je m'excuse, d'accord? Folle salope..._ "

"Wrong again," she said. She grabbed onto the steering wheel with one hand and directed the car back onto the road. "Call me a slut one more time and I will leave you bleeding in the dirt."

"Fine! Fine, I am sorry," Martin said, straining his head backwards. "The plan is to infiltrate German HQ at the Hotel de Ville, steal some papers and smuggle them out to Leclerc. Happy?"

She jerked the knife away from his throat and replaced it with the negligee. "What is this, then? Your idea of a prank?"

"No." Martin glared at her as he wiped the back of his hand across his cheek. "I was being serious. Your lodgings will be  _Le Papillon_ , near Saint-Sulpice."

"A whorehouse," Karolina said dryly.

"One with connections, and a madame that is tired of Nazis not paying her girls," Martin said, shifting into second gear.

Apparently, the only women who were allowed to be shuffled quickly in and out of the city were the prostitutes who catered to the occupying Germans – recently, there had been an outbreak of a particular nasty venereal disease among the most popular houses of ill repute, and so the Health Inspector had decided to import clean, lively country girls who were looking to make a few francs.

"No one will think twice about you. There are too many other partisans in the city for the Germans to worry about." Martin's knuckles were white on the steering wheel. He glanced over at Karolina with haughty eyes. "All you need to do is act the part."

She threw the lacy nightdress into the space between them and dug through the contents of the briefcase – a pouch of cosmetics, a blue dress with black stockings and well-worn heels, a cream-colored hat, and generous amounts of ammunition for her sub-machine gun and Welrod. If she had any doubts about the Paris mission serving as a punishment, the skimpy clothing eradicated them.

" _Le Papillon_  is one of the thousands of buildings in Paris that has basement access to the Catacombs." Martin was driving faster now, the countryside around them a bright green and grey blur. "We are sketching a partial map to other locales in the city through those tunnels."

She stroked the stockings. "There is no map?"

Martin barked out a laugh. "There has never been a map. The tunnels go on forever – some say they run more than three hundred kilometers. It used to be said that they went down to hell."

"And I am expected to navigate them."

Martin shrugged. "You will have guides, and I will be there." Seeing her skeptical expression, he shook his head. "I grew up in the tunnels, okay? My father stored his wines down there, under his store."

She didn't trust him, but she didn't have a choice. "You leave me down there and I will kill you."

"What's wrong?" he taunted. "Afraid of the dark?"

She folded the stockings into a careful square and shut the lid of the briefcase. "Yes."

* * *

Nixon was having a bad dream. No - it was a nightmare.

Something was chasing him through the woods in France, something he couldn't escape. He had been dreaming about sitting next to Dick in a foxhole, and Dick had smelled of fresh hay and sunlight, which soothed him, but then the dream turned against him and he was running like mad through brambles and branches and tripping over shattered logs. He felt the scratches on his skin sting as it began to rain, and then he heard a laugh, a woman's laugh echoing through the trees, long and low and demented and he wanted to hide under the leaves so the thing, the person, wouldn't find him.

Because he knew that laugh.

He woke up in a sweat, his sheets damp to the touch. His stomach was churning and his eyes burned and he knew that he shouldn't have drank that extra flask full of whiskey before going to bed, but dammit, he had to cut the through the malaise that had infected the town like a virus. Nixon had loitered around Dick for hours, waiting for the man to stop pacing, stop checking in on the men to see if they were doing fine, but he had realized that Dick was too troubled to listen to Nixon's paltry worries. Nix had struck out on his own, walking across the quiet, sleepy town, listening to the crickets in the hedgerows chirp to each other, thinking about his house in New Jersey. The crickets there had always been particularly loud at night, but these English crickets were fairly demure in comparison.

He had gotten drunk among the bugs and stumbled home into his nightmare. And now, Nixon desperately wanted to take a long bath and forget about the war, if only for a moment. He washed away the sweat and the musty smell of the outdoors, combed his hair, and walked across the yard to Karolina's room.

The stillness was off-putting. He was so used to Ella's high peals of laughter and Karolina yelling her replies, and now the stairs to the little room were dark and lifeless. He climbed them carefully, listening to the creak of the wood under his feet. The door to their room opened silently, and he stared at the two neatly-made beds and the spotless floor.

_Gone._

It felt like losing a friend, and a sister. He  _had_  lost a friend and a sister. Karolina's trunk was wedged under her bed, and he went over to it and jerked it up onto the bed. It was unlocked, and he looked over his shoulder at the open doorway out of habit before opening the lid. The inside was a mess, as always – clothes, bobby pins, spare ammo, mints and pens and small coins stolen from people's pockets were mixed up with one another, but the edge of an envelope caught his eye. That was new. He plucked it from where it was wedged under a shoe and smiled.

_Lewis._

He ripped open the envelope and fished out the folded paper that had been torn from a lined children's notebook, and began to read.

_I will be gone when you read this. Do NOT take any more of my things._

He snorted.

_I have told you more about myself than I have ever told anyone. Thank you for being kind to me, despite my past._

_I have to confess – I do not anticipate returning to you all. This is not because I think I won't survive. I know I won't survive. But I have made a decision: if I escape Paris alive, if I can evade the SIS, I am going back to Berlin._

_You stopped me once, and Ella was killed. I am not blaming you for her death. The truth is that they will never stop until everyone close to me is eliminated. There is no better protection than for me to leave you. You know this now. You have seen what they do._

_I am going to Berlin to rip out the root of the weed. This is the only way. Please do not be angry with me. You deserve to survive this idiotic war. Ron does not know. PLEASE, do not tell him._

_It seems foolish to say I will see you again, but I hope one day I will._

_Burn this letter._

_Love, Lina_

"Oh, you absolute bitch," said Lewis. 


End file.
